Iran-Contra figure under SEC scrutiny
Bloomberg Business News
Richard Secord, a former Air Force general and Iran-Contra defendant, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department for possible illegal insider trading, his company said in its annual report.
Secord, 71, chief executive of Computerized Thermal Imaging, sold $127,058 of the company's stock on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10. The last sale came hours before the price fell 63 percent in one day, after an advisory panel recommended that the Food and Drug Administration not approve the company's flagship breast cancer scanning machine.
The Ogden, Utah-based company said costs related to the probes, more than $800,000 to date, could force it to halt operations.
"The investigations are ongoing," the company wrote in the report, which was filed with the SEC this week. "The expenses we may incur in the future could substantially and adversely affect our working capital, distract management from day-to-day operations and retard capital formation, which may result in us having to materially reduce or terminate our operations."
Secord didn't return calls seeking comment. Spokesmen for the SEC and the U.S. attorney's office in New York said agency policies prohibited them from commenting.
Secord pleaded guilty in 1989 to lying to Congress about the Reagan administration's funding of Nicaraguan rebels with funds raised from Iranian arms sales. He was deputy assistant secretary of defense in the administration. The U.S. District Court in Washington expunged his conviction in 2000, at his request.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2130018