SEC Fines Aerospace Contractor for Bad Bookkeeping

C12aircraft

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wields a lot of power including those over energy companies all over Oklahoma. Sometimes its power involves transportation such as the $1.6 million fine against an aerospace company that provides aircraft for the Oklahoma Air National Guard and Fort Sill, to mention a few.

In Wednesday’s announcement, the SEC said it fined the New York company for failure to maintain books, records and accounts concerning its contracts with the Army concerning C-12 reconnaissance planes. Those are the same planes that the Oklahoma Air National Guard began flying in the summer of 2015 after years of flying KC-135 refueling tankers.

Executives at L-3 Technologies realized in the summer of 2013 that their five-year contract with the army wasn’t going to make money. So they devised a plan to bill the U.S. Army for work that had not been billed yet to the military. They realized that nearly $50 million in work had been performed on the C-12 contract but not billed.

The C-12s are a military version of the Hawker Beechcraft King Air, similar to the one owned by the state to fly the governor. They are used by the Oklahoma Air National Guard to perform reconnaissance missions, sometimes around the Mexican border and in other missions overseas.