The W. A. Baum Co. of Copiague, N.Y., manufacturer of blood pressure measuring devices, has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $6,000 for violating the U.S. laws against the Arab boycott of American companies doing business with Israel, the U.S. Department of Commerce has announced.
The Department said the Baum firm was fined $5,000 for furnishing prohibited information in response to a boycott request from Abu Dhabi and $1,000 for failing to report the request.
In a letter to John Baum, president of the company, the Department said Baum signed a distributorship agreement dated July 11, 1979 with persons in Abu Dhabi stating “there is no Israel interest, influence, labor or ownership in the W.A. Baum Company, Inc.” The Department alleged that Baum also failed to report this statement.
Erich Hirschhorn, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for export administration, said the $1,000 fine exceeded some recent penalties for reporting violations because “the matter was discovered through the independent investigative efforts of the Office of Antiboycott Compliance and not voluntarily revealed by the firm. All things being equal, the fact that a firm discovers its own mistakes and brings them to us will be a significant mitigating factor.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
