In a statement, the US Department of Commerce announced that Seagate Technology Holdings PLC had fined the company $300 million for sending $1.1 billion worth of hard disk drives to China’s Huawei company in violation of US export control laws, which the company accepted.Huge fine from the USA to Seagate
According to the reports, Seagate sold hard disk drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021, despite the August 2020 rule restricting the sale of certain products made with US technology to Huawei. Huawei was placed on the US blacklist Entity List in 2019 to reduce the sale of US goods to the company due to national security and foreign policy concerns. This penalty demonstrates the severity of the sanctions and the culmination of a series of steps Washington has taken to keep from China sophisticated technology that could support China’s military, enable human rights abuses or otherwise threaten US security.
The Ministry of Commerce said Seagate had shipped 7.4 million drives to Huawei over the course of nearly a year after the 2020 rule went into effect, making it Huawei’s main supplier. It is stated that the other two suppliers, Western Digital and Toshiba, have stopped sales as of the relevant date.“Even after its competitors stopped selling to them, Seagate continued to ship hard disk drives to Huawei. Today’s action is a consequence of that,” said Matthew Axelrod, assistant secretary for export practices at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. said. Axelrod also said that the administrative penalty imposed was the largest in the history of the institution not connected to a criminal case.
44527
