On ternary Kloosterman sums modulo 12

Let K(a) denote the Kloosterman sum on . It is easy to see that for all . We completely characterize those for which , and . The simplicity of the characterization allows us to count the number of the belonging to each of these three classes. As a byproduct we offer an alternative proof for a new class of quasi-perfect ternary linear codes recently presented by Danev and Dodunekov.