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DHL to pay $9.4 million fine

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By John Nolan, Staff Writer 12:57 PM Thursday, August 6, 2009

Express shipper DHL has agreed to pay the federal government $9.4 million to settle allegations concerning the company’s transport of packages to Iran, Syria and Sudan and failures to meet record-keeping requirements, the government said Thursday, Aug. 6.

The Treasury and Commerce departments announced the settlement, which concerned package transport services DHL Express provided for customers from 2002 to 2007.

“DHL’s pervasive compliance failures allowed for numerous shipments ... in apparent violation of Treasury and Commerce department regulations,” said Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The shipments involved correspondence, personal items and consumer goods, DHL said in a statement.

“The U.S. government has not alleged that DHL transported shipments of strategic sensitivity to these countries,” DHL said.

The Treasury Department cited problems with more than 300 shipments. Federal regulations prohibit the shipment of most goods to Iran and Sudan, and require maintenance of complete records on shipments for five years, the government said. Descriptions of the package contents that DHL transported were missing from thousands of air waybill documents, according to federal investigators.

DHL said it fully cooperated with the federal investigation. The company said it has since taken precautions by adopting new compliance measures and hiring personnel to oversee them.

The shipments involved fewer than 1 percent of DHL Express’ total export package volume during that time, DHL said.

For much of that time, DHL’s Wilmington airport operation served as its U.S. freight hub. Since 2008, the company imposed cost-cutting measures that wiped out thousands of jobs at the Wilmington hub. Last month, DHL transferred what remained of those operations to Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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