US-based helicopter transport services company Offshore Logistics is having to restate its financial results for the past five years because of discrepancies related to payroll taxes uncovered during an internal review. New York-based Offshore Logistics, whose subsidiaries include the UK’s Bristow Helicopters, admits it may “encounter difficulties” in doing business in “certain foreign jurisdictions and with certain customers” as a result.

The company began the internal review in February following “indications of improper activities related to payments made by affiliated entities in a foreign country”, says chief financial officer Brian Voegele, who took over his post at the company in June, following the resignation of his predecessor Eddy Dupuis and the termination of the employment of the company’s executive vice-president for North America, Drury Milke, who was also president of affiliate Air Logistics. The resignations were for “reasons related to the investigation”, says Voegele, who is leaving the company imminently to become senior vice-president and chief financial officer at oilfield services company Pride International.

Voegele says the discrepancies uncovered during the investigation that led Offshore Logistics to determine that it needed to restate its financials would cause “difficulties with relations with certain governments” even without the impact of the issues related to the foreign payments that initially led to the internal review. The two issues are “separate, but inter-related”, Voegele says. He declines to comment on which countries the company could experience problems with following the review, but says Offshore Logistics conducts around two-thirds of its business in the North Sea and North America, with the balance spread worldwide.

The restatement of financial results is likely to have an impact on previously reported operating income to the tune of between $2 million and $5 million for each of the fiscal years ending March 2005, 2004 and 2003. The impact for previous years will be between $4 million and $6 million in the aggregate.

HELEN MASSY-BERESFORD / LONDON

Source: Flight International