The State - News from Jan. 7, 1988

A Berkeley city councilman and a San Francisco attorney pleaded innocent to 17 federal charges of attempting to evade export laws to divert microcomputers to China. Councilman Frederick D. Weekes, 62, and attorney Bernardus J. Smit, 60, were accused of filing false export documents in 1983-84 in an effort to ship microcomputers to Hong Kong. The computers were then allegedly to be diverted to China. Weekes’ attorney, William B. Turner, said, “There was nothing immoral or wrong with selling computers to the Peoples Republic of China. This was an extremely technical paper work problem.”