Audits away....

So we buy helmets as surplus from the Department of Defense. As part of the purchasing process, we must complete an End Use Certificate (EUC) stating what the final disposition of the purchased items will be. The rationale for this is that kevlar helmets are items that both the State Department and Commerce Department place restrictions on. As such, we may only export them to certain countries and in certain quantities.

If you are reading this from your local cyber-cafe in Pyongyang, I am sorry to inform you that I cannot sell you ten kevlar helmets.

Since we have made several purchases from the Department of Defense along these lines, our names came up as being ripe for an audit to determine our proper handling of these items. So we had a visit from a representative of the DoD this morning. She was very pleasant and courteous, and was pleased to see that we are controlling our products very well. She gave us a thumbs up on our understanding of the trade regulations and left after a short while. It ended up being a fairly uneventful encounter all-in-all.

It was interesting as for most of my professional career, I have been in the shoes of the auditor in one form or another. I am used to asking the questions, not answering them, and this experience gave me at least a slightly better understanding of how the relationship feels from the other end.