NCR, accused by a whistle-blower of illegally doing business in Syria, has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Duluth technology company said Thursday.
The company is “cooperating fully” with the investigation, NCR’s vice president of investor relations, Gavin Bell, said at the start of the company’s third quarter earnings call.
In addition to the SEC subpoena, the company said it has received inquiries from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a division of the U.S. Treasury that enforces economic sanctions. NCR voluntarily gave whistleblower communications to the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Northern District of Georgia, Bell said, and has created a special committee in response to a shareholder demand letter.
The U.S. Attorney’s office cannot confirm or deny an investigation, first assistant U.S. attorney John Horn said.
At NCR, an internal investigation designed to refute untrue accusations and determine the “appropriate remedial action” for those that are true is “making good progress,” Bell said.
NCR chairman and CEO Bill Nuti said he expects that investigation to be finished in three to six months.
“We’d love to talk about this issue more than we can today, but we want to respect the process that’s underway,” he said on the conference call. “I do think we’re closer to the end.”
The company said in an August SEC filing that it had been accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by doing business in Syria after August 2011, the last time American companies were allowed to operate direct subsidiaries in the country. The whistle-blower also accused NCR of bribing officials in China and Oman.
NCR’s stock fell 10 percent after the accusations came out. At the time, NCR said the company takes all such allegations seriously, but that it had “certain concerns about the motivation of the purported whistle-blower and the accuracy of the allegations it received, some of which appear to be untrue.”
NCR made $57 million in the third quarter, a 256 percent increase over its year-ago profits for the same period, leading company officials to increase revenue expectations for the year.
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