A Carson City company, U.S.
Global Nanospace Inc., says it's cooperating with a request from the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for more information about the company's press releases.
The SEC won't confirm that it's made any inquiries at publicly held U.S.
Global and says it wouldn't talk about its actions even if it were poking around.
And a London-based Web site that says it brought the SEC's attention to U.S.
Global's press releases says it won't back down despite hints that the Carson City company might sue.
The Web site, our-street.com, says it will honor a request by the SEC to turn over its evidence to federal regulators.
In January, our-street.com posted an eight-page complaint about U.S.
Global Nanospace Inc.
and said it had filed the complaint with the SEC.
The complaint says the Carson City company issued a press release in April 2003 that said the company received $1.44 million in orders from El Al Israel Airlines for 38 cockpit security doors.
Further, the our-street.com complaint says that executives of U.S.
Global Nanospace were quoted in the Reno Gazette-Journal, saying they had 200 firm orders for cockpit security doors.
In filings with the SEC, however, the company didn't mention the orders.
In fact, our-street.com says, U.S.
Global Nanospace didn't even mention the cockpit doors as one of its products in a corporate update in late 2003.
The Gazette-Journal article also quoted company executives as saying U.S.
Global employed nearly 500 people.
In an SEC filing at about the same time, however, U.S.
Global said it had 11 fulltime employees, our-street.com reported.
In late 2002, our-street.com said, the company said it licensed water-repellent technology from Moose River Consulting Inc.
The press release estimated the market for the technology at $50 million a year.
Other than a mention in an SEC filing shortly about the same time as the press release, the deal has disappeared from U.S.
Global's filings, says ourstreet.
com.
When it said that it had received a request from the SEC for more information, U.S.
Global Nanospace said it "welcomes the opportunity to clarify any misconceptions that the SEC and/or the public may have about the company." And the company said in a press release that it might go after ourstreet.
com.
"The company has been and intends to continue to pursue all possible legal remedies against our-street.com to the extent it has published false, misleading and/or outdated information about the company," U.S.
Global Nanospace said.
A spokesman for the company said last week that U.S.
Global has nothing further to report about the SEC inquiry or its review of the our-street.com article.
The publisher of our-street.com said he hasn't received a request from U.S.
Global Nanospace to correct his Web site's report.
"We have a public policy of aggressively correcting any errors in our reports.
This commitment is evidenced throughout our website whenever unintentional inaccuracies have been discovered," said publisher Nick Tracy in answer to an e-mailed inquiry from Northern Nevada Business Weekly.
"We also offer to publish any responsible comments or contradicting evidence by featured companies or their representatives.
To date, no company, including US Global Nanospace, has submitted contradicting information to any of our allegations or provided us with a statement denying any aspect of our complaints," Tracy said.
He said the Web site launched in March 2003 has reported on 18 publicly held companies, and it believes the SEC has taken regulatory action concerning at least four of them.
Tracy acknowledged that litigation can be expensive and time-consuming, and he said the Web site reports carefully and aggressively corrects errors to reduce the threat of lawsuits.
"Still, litigation is a double edged sword as it provides our-street.com with the power to subpoena documents and communication from the litigant in order to prove our case.
Such discovery power will greatly enhance our ability to gather evidence," he said.
