Posted on 09/19/2006 11:49:49 AM PDT by jdm
SAN FRANCISCO — Super Micro Computer Inc., a supplier of high-end servers and mother boards, pleaded guilty Monday (Sept. 18) to a felony charge of unlawfully exporting computer components to Iran, according to the U.S. attorney's office here.
According to the Commerce Department, the conviction is among the first of a U.S. company for exporting items to Iran controlled for national security reasons.
Super Micro (San Jose, Calif.) was charged Sept. 1 with one count of knowingly exporting items subject to export regulations without obtaining a license, the Justice Department said. The company agreed to plead guilty and pay a $150,000 fine.
In pleading guilty, the company admitted that between December 2001, and January 2002, it sold 300 of the company's P4SBA+ motherboards worth $27,600 to a company based in the United Arab Emirates. The exports occurred despite the fact that the company knew the items would be shipped to Iran, the Justice Department said.
The exported boards were controlled for national security reasons, and exporting them to Iran without a license was illegal, the Justice Department said. The motherboards at issue are no longer controlled under U.S. export rules.
In response to the investigation, the company implemented a new export control program in February 2004, the government said. Since then, the government has been monitoring Super Micro's exports and has found no evidence of further export violations.
meaning they found a better straw purchaser.
Looks like a Chinese is the CEO. Go figure.....
Interesting. I'm an ASUS fan myself, but SuperMicro and Abit are always in the ballpark.
See
http://www.pricewatch.com/motherboards/
"Chinese" may very well be Taiwanese. I did some dealing with the PC motherboard world in the Fremont/Oakland area a while back and it was mostly owned and off-shored to Taiwan back then.
As long as the board screams, I'm happy.
Whatever they are, they don't care much for this country if they are selling secret software to our enemies.
Silicon Valley is full of America haters. We have the worst type here - they are money grubbing America haters of the Bernie Schwartz ilk.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/P4/845/P4SBA+.cfm
High end.. what a joke... looks like a generic socket 478 mainboard...and they are generic crap mainboards...
And they are plagued by bad capacitors:
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2336
What next are they going to say that Intel processors support terrorism and nuclear madmen?
meaning they found a better straw purchaser.
Given the desire, exporters and importers can run documentary rings around Customs, etc.
Food products deemed unfit for human consumption have been known to be "exported", but on paper only...along comes a little repackaging, and voila - more than a few bucks are made back on the domestic market. This sort of practice was not at all uncommon during my 25 years in the frozen seafood business.
We have very strict export controls on computer components, even for systems not much faster than the computer you are probably reading this on.
It's possible that the person processing the order simply didn't realize that it's illegal to sell these if they are going to an end customer in Iran without getting an export license. People who regularly deal with international sales should know this, but a new employee that had mainly dealt with domestic sales might not realize it.
However, 300 server boards is pretty noticeable sized order, so even if it was an accident, I would think that it would get noticed by a supervisor that these were going to the middle east.
It doesn't sound like this was a common practice, and it sounds like they were fined enough to doing this unprofitable even if the got away with it 9 times out of 10.
I suspect they are going to be even more careful in the future, and the Iranians are going to have to buy their motherboards through even more indirect methods.
According to the article:
".....The exported boards were controlled for national security reasons..."
I guess that is what helped my assumptions about 'secret' software along...lol. Let's hope you are right and there is nothing more sinister than greed here.
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