Cargo carrier DHL Airways Inc said it has agreed to sell the company to an investor group led by its new Chairman and Chief Executive, John Dasburg, for US million, in a move to dispel concerns about who controls the company.

　　The cash deal for the Miami-based airline is expected to be completed on June 30, pending approval by the US Department of Transportation, company spokesman Ray Lutz said on Wednesday.

　　Dasburg will remain in DHL Airways' top posts, which he assumed on April 1. He currently owns 5 percent of the airline. The other owners will be Richard C. Blum, chairman of San Francisco-based Blum Capital Partners LP, and Michael R. Klein, chairman of CoStar Group Inc, a real estate firm.

　　Since the company will be privately held, it would not release the new ownership breakdown.

　　Its current majority owner is William Robinson, who took control of DHL Airways in 2000. Deutsche Post, the German postal system, holds a 25 percent voting stake in the airline, Lutz said.

　　The sale comes as the Department of Transportation is investigating to see if the company is violating federal law limiting the stake a foreign entity can hold in a US airline.

　　After the sale is completed, DHL Airways said it will sign an 11-year deal to be the charter carrier of DHL Worldwide Express Inc. DHL Airways made 90 percent of its 2002 revenue from DHL Worldwide. Both companies are US partners with Deutsche Post's DHL International.

　　DHL Airways and DHL Worldwide Express do not share any ownership, Lutz said.

　　"DHL Airways is all-American owned and all-American managed," Dasburg said.

　　The mostly German government-owned Deutsche Post has stepped up its efforts in worldwide delivery, raising concern from its two American-based competitors - FedEx and United Parcel Service.

　　But competitors say the sale changes little, since DHL Airways still makes most of its money from a foreign entity.

　　"It's just sort of shifting names in an organizational chart," said FedEx spokeswoman Kristin Krause.