Lasarray Confirms Search, Points to Its Swiss Affiliate : Commerce: U.S. agents’ visit to the firm’s Irvine offices came as a surprise, executive says.

A top official at Lasarray Corp. confirmed Monday that federal agents had recently searched the company’s offices and contended that the search was connected with the activities of the Irvine firm’s Swiss-based affiliate.

The comments were the first by Lasarray officials since The Times reported Friday that federal agents searched the company’s offices in connection with a federal investigation into possible illegal exports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to the Soviet Union.

E. Timothy Fitzgibbons, Lasarray Corp.’s president and chief executive, said in a statement that the government search came as “a complete surprise.”

“I believe the investigation centers around the delivery of integrated circuit prototype machines by our sister division, Lasarray S.A. (in Brier, Switzerland), to one or more sites in the Soviet Union,” Fitzgibbons said.

“Furthermore, it is our understanding that none of our hardware or software products are supplied with our Swiss sister division’s exports to the East Bloc,” he said. “I’m really in the dark about the particulars of any alleged illegalities.”

Officials at the Bureau of Export Administration’s regional office in Newport Beach and U.S. Customs Service in Long Beach, whose agents were involved in the March 22 search, declined comment.

Lasarray manufactures computer workstations that are used as mini-laboratories to produce custom-designed semiconductors. The Swiss affiliate had publicly acknowledged as far back as July, 1989, that it had sent chip-making systems to the Soviet Union.

“Considering our total openness to representatives of the Department of Commerce and other federal agencies and the long negotiations between the Swiss and the U.S. governments concerning these exports, this action came as a complete surprise to us and seems completely unwarranted,” Fitzgibbons said.

He would not comment on what action the company might take, except to say that the firm is discussing its options with legal counsel.

Fitzgibbons said the recession and cuts in federal research spending have had an adverse impact on the company’s chip-making equipment business. He said the firm, a subsidiary of Lasarray Holding Co. in Thundorf, Switzerland, planned to announce a laser lithography machine at a semiconductor industry trade show in Northern California next week.