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China Businesses The Courts United States

Newly Obtained Documents Show Huawei Role In Shipping Prohibited US Gear To Iran (reuters.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the paper-trail dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China's Huawei, which for years has denied violating American trade sanctions on Iran, produced internal company records in 2010 that show it was directly involved in sending prohibited U.S. computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator. Two Huawei packing lists, dated December 2010, included computer equipment made by Hewlett-Packard Co and destined for the Iranian carrier, internal Huawei documents reviewed by Reuters show. Another Huawei document, dated two months later, stated: "Currently the equipment is delivered to Tehran, and waiting for the custom clearance."

The packing lists and other internal documents, reported here for the first time, provide the strongest documentary evidence to date of Huawei's involvement in alleged trade sanctions violations. They could bolster Washington's multifaceted campaign to check the power of Huawei, the world's leading telecommunications-equipment maker. The newly obtained documents involve a multi-million dollar telecommunications project in Iran that figures prominently in an ongoing criminal case Washington has brought against the Chinese company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. The daughter of Huawei's founder, Meng has been fighting extradition from Canada to the United States since her arrest in Vancouver in December 2018. Huawei and Meng have denied the charges, which involve bank fraud, wire fraud and other allegations. The documents, which aren't cited in the criminal case, provide new details about Huawei's role in providing an Iranian telecom carrier with numerous computer servers, switches and other equipment made by HP, as well as software made by other American companies at the time, including Microsoft, Symantec and Novell. "A U.S. indictment alleges that Huawei and Meng participated in a fraudulent scheme to obtain prohibited U.S. goods and technology for Huawei's Iran-based business, and move money out of Iran by deceiving Western banks," the report adds. "The indictment accuses Huawei and Meng of surreptitiously using an "unofficial subsidiary" in Iran called Skycom Tech Co Ltd to obtain the prohibited goods."

The documents also show that Chinese company, Panda International Information Technology Co, was involved in shipping gear to Iran too.
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Newly Obtained Documents Show Huawei Role In Shipping Prohibited US Gear To Iran More

Newly Obtained Documents Show Huawei Role In Shipping Prohibited US Gear To Iran

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  • Awe, it's OK because everyone else does it, right? /s

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The sanctions are an act of war. I hope that some day Iran and the rest of the world can and will defend themselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Sure is a true statement when it comes to arms trade. Every country making weapons appears to be illegally selling them as well. That attitude, of course, goes right to the top every time.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The whataboutism is HUGE! "The US rarely arrests senior businesspeople, US or foreign, for alleged crimes committed by their companies. Corporate managers are usually arrested for their alleged personal crimes (such as embezzlement, bribery or violence) rather than their company's alleged malfeasance. Yes, corporate managers should be held to account for their companies' malfeasance, up to and including criminal charges; but to start this practice with a leading Chinese businessperson, rather than the doz

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        you must come from a country that's under paragraph sanctions

    • Actually, not everyone does it, it's only the US. Breaching the international agreement was a unilateral US act. Imposing sanctions was a unilateral US act.

      Huawei may be in legal trouble in the US, but they didn't do anything immoral in this case. It's not evil to provide Iranians with phones.

      • I could argue that it is immoral to buy stuff from someone under the stipulation that it must not be delivered to certain parties, and then to deliver it to those certain parties. But it really doesn't matter as Chinese views on morality do not line up with US views on morality (and I'm not arguing one is better). The point is Huawei has decided that not getting caught was worth the risk. They were caught. Now there will be penalties. I have no idea if immediate damage is worth it for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      This is one of those cases where Whataboutism has a point though. Not that it makes the thing ok, but it can highlight politically motivated selective enforcement.

  • Hang on a sec (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If international law has been broken then why isn't the trial happening in the International Court of Justice, The Hague? Otherwise, why is the UN allowing USA to exert local laws outside its borders?
    • The international court of what? Where? Lol. Because welcome to the real world of realpolitik where might makes right. The ICoJ is toothless. They have the power to send a nasty worded form letter and no more.

    • Re:Hang on a sec (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Monday March 02, 2020 @08:11PM (#59789996)

      Because the US has a long history of strong-arming others, including citizens and companies of US allies [amazon.com], under the disguised of laws, while not really bother to apply the same to its own billionaire crooks [bloomberg.com] doing the same. it is called American Exceptionalism, a.k.a. hypocrisy. It can do so without any retribution because it has controlled everything in the modern world and will be able to continue doing so until China emerge as a superpower. That's why the US is freaking out -- the US is freaking it is losing its monopoly of this planet.

      The USA, however, should learn that Rome Empire eventually collapsed.

      • Re:Hang on a sec (Score:5, Interesting)

        by CRC'99 ( 96526 ) on Monday March 02, 2020 @10:21PM (#59790308) Homepage

        Well, yes... America has proven with Assange that they are more than willing to go after people who broke American laws while not in America or any of its states.

        In their eyes, American Law = World law. Which is not how it should be, nor how any country should have influence over.

        • Well, yes... America has proven with Assange that they are more than willing to go after people who broke American laws while not in America or any of its states.

          So, you need to be physically located in a particular jurisdiction before that jurisdiction can pursue you for a crime? By that logic, shouldn't someone who swats your house get off without even a slap on the wrist? Of course not, because you don't need to be physically located in a particular territory to commit a crime that occurs in that territory, nor to commit one against that territory or its people.

          Whether the US is right or not to go after Assange is a related topic, and one that is certainly worth

    • You apparently don't know what the UN is for. It's not a world government.

  • You just have to ask.

    It's a short trip to the border.

    • To extradite Ms. Meng, it is not sufficient to show that Huawei violated sanctions. The US DOJ needs to show that she personally approved or knew about the violations.

      • Which these documents do.

        • No they do not prove anything. Most likely there was a blind legal cutout to satisfy legal deniability - which is business as usual for the arms trade . They most likely had lawyers involved. So easy to order the stuff really anywhere in the US, deliver to a shell business, then whack into a shipping container as electronic scrap. Once on the high seas/skies - it can be diverted almost anywhere. You can even sell the ship and transportation contract on the high seas. Or you can admit to bugging foreign dip

  • Are they sure? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Monday March 02, 2020 @06:45PM (#59789744)
    "numerous computer servers, switches and other equipment made by HP"

    Are they sure that's made by HP, or is it designed by HP and made by some Chinese manufacturer for them?

  • Only the leader because China Subsidized them (Score:3)

    by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Monday March 02, 2020 @08:36PM (#59790078)

    Like all other Chinese "leaders" in industry they are only that way because the Chinese government subsidized the crap out of them and likely assisted in economic espionage and passed the data on to Huawei. Huawei's been estimated to have received almost a Trillion dollars in subsidies through the various vehicles that the Chinese government uses, from no cost loans, free property and direct subsidies.

    Almost all the major Chinese conglomerates are subsidized heavily. If a western country did the same they'd be a pariah. It's amazing this has been allowed to occur for so long. Bush left the door open and did nothing when companies started complaining about theft of trade secrets.

    Huawei should be banned throughout the west and given a technology death sentence (not allowed to buy any western tech) in all western countries. IMO it would be an objective lesson in the benefits of such subsidies. Without access to western tech they'd be dead in 8 months.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      You wanna remove all those subsidies and market distortions from your agricultural industry and see how well you can compete on an actual open market? How about Boeing?

    • Yeah, like your government doesn't subsidise anything right. No special deals for the petro chems and mining industry, or anything like that. No introducing sanctions to protect your own countries monopolies and trading interests. I seem to recall sanctions in an attempt to stop the Russians building a new gas pipeline. As far as your vaunted tech industry goes, most of the people doing the research are foreigners, which is why there is such a stink and cry about the H1B visa's. America is just good at
    • The US partakes in economic espionage (enercon, , subsidizes agri, tech, petro, etc companies. Oh god the horror when someone else does it. All allies must come to the US's aid on this matter or else.

  • So, as of a few days ago, Huawei was continuing to claim complete and total innocence from charges of sanctions-busting and facilitated IP theft.

    Now, today, Huawei is now shown via irrefutable evidence to be contradicting themselves completely on at least one of those charges. ...Wow, definitely not making it easy for Anti-American activists in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

    I have zero sympathy for anyone still attempting to defend this company and the less-than-savory actions of other Chinese multinationals still pretending to have full independence from national government interests. And yes, the nature of these interests are much more different than companies doing contract work for the US government.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nashv ( 1479253 )

      I have zero sympathy for anyone still attempting to defend this company and the less-than-savory actions of other Chinese multinationals still pretending to have full independence from national government interests. And yes, the nature of these interests are much more different than companies doing contract work for the US government.

      However, most of the world has zero fucks given for U.S. sanctions imposed that Americans expect the entire world to follow. If you keep unreasonable expectations like that, then its only a matter of time before you are "surprised" by the truth.

      • However, most of the world has zero fucks given for U.S. sanctions imposed that Americans expect the entire world to follow.

        wouldnt then Huawei just say "yeah, we did it -- so what?" and then the rest of the world would stand up, laugh, and give each other high fives?

        but instead, Huawei's saying "how dare you! we would never dream do such a thing!"

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