A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission campaign to remind companies that the agency is monitoring them to determine whether they are doing business with countries on the U.S. sanctions list included a reminder to one of Western Pennsylvania’s most successful publicly traded tech companies.
The SEC adopted rules in 2008 that require companies to disclose some types of business dealings with Iran, Syria and Sudan. The enactment of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syrian Human Rights Act in 2012 added other disclosure requirements, said Zack Hadzismajlovic, an attorney in the New York office of McCarter & English.
“They seem to be concentrating on tech companies,” he said. “So far, none of the [SEC] inquiries have resulted in any kind of legal actions or findings of wrongdoing.”
Mr. Hadzismajlovic said many companies are not aware of the disclosure requirements.
He said the SEC sometimes sends out a raft of letters to remind companies of their responsibilities in the hopes it will make them be more diligent in their reporting. In some cases, the letters are reminders that the SEC knows more than what is disclosed in a company’s quarterly or annual reports, Mr. Hadzismajlovic said.