Terrorists in the November attack in Paris didn’t use a firearm previously sold by a Delray Beach gun wholesaler, contrary to a news service report, the U.S. Department of Justice announced late Thursday.

In fact, the gun is not even in Europe. It’s in Mexico.

Federal authorities say the M92 semi-automatic pistol in question traces back to an unidentified Mexican crime scene and is in the custody of the Mexican government.

The result for family-owned Century Arms is vindication, since the company said last week that it couldn’t confirm reports that its gun wound up in Paris. But it shows that its guns still end up in conflict zones.

They have been labeled a weapon of choice for drug cartels but a company lawyer told The Palm Beach Post on Friday that Century Arms does not sell weapons to Mexico.

The Justice Department contradicted a Dec. 10 report by the Associated Press that Milojko Brzakovic, a Serbian arms factory chief, said a serial number on a semi-automatic pistol found in Paris after the attacks that killed 130 matched one the Zastava arms factory delivered in May 2013 to Century Arms.

The AP issued a correction Friday, saying it "incorrectly reported that a gun exported by a Serbian manufacturer to a Florida-based company was involved in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. In fact, the gun in question was not involved in the attacks and has been in Mexican government custody since March of this year, according to U.S. authorities."

The news service blamed an advisory posted by the Serbian Interior Ministry.

"The advisory quoted Interpol authorities as saying a gun manufactured by Zastava with a particular serial number was used in Paris. The AP story should have made clear that the connection between a Zastava gun with that serial number and the Paris attacks was based only on this advisory."

Vermont Public Radio and WPTV News Channel 5 in West Palm Beach first reported on the Justice Department statement late Thursday. Century Arms, founded in 1961 in Montreal, has a manufacturing and distribution center in northern Vermont. It moved its headquarters to Delray Beach in 1993.

Century Arms lawyer Brady Toensing told The Palm Beach Post that the AP should have waited for a response from the U.S. government. "And it should have performed an elementary-level review of the United States import laws, which require that all firearms imported into the United States have specific markings on them."

"Performing proper due diligence and verifying whether the firearm had the required United States import markings should have been, but was not, done before reporting this story," he said.

Under scrutiny

Century Arms, although through no fault of its own, once again found itself under scrutiny. In the past, the company and its supporters insist Century Arms is not to blame because it strictly follows the law.

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, the Rutland Herald newspaper in Vermont asked its congressmen if they were troubled that Century Arms was doing business in the state.

None other than U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the darling of the left now seeking the Democratic nomination for president, came to the company’s defense. Sanders and two other Vermont congressman, Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Peter Welch, both Democrats, issued a joint statement.

"They are engaged in a lawful business just as others are that are involved in firearms commerce, employing many Vermonters," the statement said. "Like all federal firearms licensees, they are subject to oversight by several federal agencies, including the State Department and ATF, and that is appropriate.

Other news reports tied weapons sold by Century Arms to rebels during the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s and to crimes committed by Mexican drug cartels in 2013.

In a three-paragraph statement, after the initial AP report linking Century Arms to Paris, the company said it couldn’t confirm the AP report and was working with authorities.

Toensing told The Post that Century doesn’t sell firearms to Mexico.

"Century expects firearms shipped to licensed firearms dealers in the United States to be sold in compliance with the law, which prohibits the selling or transfer of firearms to anyone outside the United States without express government approval," he said. "Century also expects that individuals who break these laws will be found, prosecuted, and punished."

The Justice Department said the chain of distribution for the firearm in question showed Century Arms eventually sent it to a federal firearms licensee in the United States, where it was purchased by an individual in February 2014. It was recovered in March at a Mexican crime scene.

Moral quandary

The attorney for Century Arms, though, declined to answer questions on whether there is a moral imperative — not just a legal one — for wholesalers to make sure its weapons end up used legally.

Claudio Sandoval, who worked for Century Arms as a customer service representative, said that such a moral quandary led him to leave the company after three years. He told The Palm Beach Post that even now, 15 years after he left, he had "mixed feelings" after he saw the reports linking the company to the Paris attacks.

Sandoval, who now lives in his native Chile, said he wasn’t comfortable with selling AK-47 rifles, from which the M92 is derived, to local gun shops and individuals. He also worried about the transparency of the transactions and whether the refurbished weapons he sold would malfunction.

"I stopped looking at them as if they were just machines," he said.

Anthony Scibelli, a salesman at Century Arms around the same time as Sandoval, said the wholesaler isn’t to blame for what a buyer does with a weapon. Century Arms, he told The Post, dealt strictly with licensed firearms dealers or individuals with licenses to buy antique weapons.

When the Deerfield Beach resident heard about Century’s Paris link, Scibelli said he thought the report "almost seemed trivial. As if Smith & Wesson sold a weapon to a dealer."

Largest importer

Steve Barborini, a former resident agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, always was doubtful of the Paris link to Century Arms, which he described as the largest importer of legal firearms from post-Soviet bloc countries, such as Romania and the former Yugoslavia.

"I figured they might have gotten a real AK-47 from some other Soviet bloc countries, like Russia," he said. "I was surprised a semi-automatic version that started in Serbia and went here and then came back was used."

Barborini said criminals and terrorists can use straw buyers to obtain the weapons. The trail often runs cold for federal investigators once they get to these straw buyers.

Such guns are smuggled out of the United States by third parties through Mexico, the Dominican Republic or the Bahamas, he said, before being shipped elsewhere by sea.

"They send something marked household goods and put a gun in the middle of it," he said.