FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	CRM

FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 1998	(202) 514-2008

	TDD (202) 514-1888

	

PLANT COMPANY PLEADS GUILTY IN TOBACCO FRAUD INVESTIGATION





	WASHINGTON, D.C.--DNA Plant Technology Corporation (DNAP)
pleaded guilty today to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to
violate the Tobacco Seed Export law, the Department of Justice
announced.  Sentencing was set for a later date.  

	The plea is the first criminal conviction in the
Department's continuing investigation of the tobacco industry. 
As part of its plea agreement, DNAP agreed to cooperate with the
government's investigation.

	The Department's Fraud Section and the U. S. Attorney's
office for the District of Columbia said DNAP pleaded guilty
before Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson to a criminal
information filed in U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia charging it with conspiring to send tobacco seed to
several foreign countries without a federal permit (18 U.S.C.,
Sec. 371). 

	DNAP, based in Oakland, California, is a biotechnology
company that develops and improves various plant varieties
through genetic engineering and advanced breeding techniques.  

	According to the information, DNAP entered into a contract
in 1983 with a United States tobacco company (which, as an
unindicted co-conspirator, the government declined to name as a
matter of policy), to grow and improve high-nicotine lines of
tobacco.   

	The information charged that DNAP conspired with the tobacco
company and its Brazilian affiliate to violate a law that
prohibited the export of tobacco seed from the United States
without a permit.  It charged that employees of DNAP and the
tobacco companies, from 1984 through 1991, conspired to illegally
export tobacco seeds to Brazil and a number of other countries to
develop tobacco with a high nicotine content.  The law
prohibiting such exports was repealed in 1991.

	The government said employees of DNAP and the tobacco
company illegally shipped the seed by air express or courier and
hid it on themselves to smuggle into Brazil while travelling.

	One of the tobacco company's goals, said the information,
was to develop a reliable source of high-nicotine tobaccos that
could be used to control and manipulate the nicotine levels in
the company's cigarettes.  The government also charged that
during an investigation of the tobacco industry by the Food and
Drug Administration in 1994, DNAP knowingly concealed from the
FDA information about its contract with the tobacco company and
the export of tobacco seeds.

	The maximum penalty for the misdemeanor violation is a fine
of $200,000 or twice the pecuniary gain to DNAP under the
contract.

	The Justice Department praised the work of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) squad dealing with the tobacco
investigation.      

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