Posted on 03/07/2017 9:11:21 AM PST by blam
In Wilbur Ross' first public announcement, the former hedge fund manger and current Trump commerce secretary announced that China's telecommunications giant ZTE has agreed to pay a total of $1.2 billion in penalties and plead guilty to violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, selling US technology to Tehran, and obstructing a federal investigation, ending a five-year probe that has raised trade tensions between the U.S. and China. The penalty was among the largest ever in a sanctions case.
ZTE was accused that over a six-year-long period, it planned to obtain technology products from the U.S., incorporate them into ZTE equipment and ultimately ship the equipment to Iran. The company agree to settle because as the WSJ adds, it avoided a more-devastating supply cutoff of U.S. components, which the Commerce Department slapped on ZTE in March 2016 and immediately suspended as a settlement was negotiated. Without key components such as Qualcomm processors for its smartphones, ZTE’s ability to produce some of its major products could have been crippled in a matter of months, putting it at the risk of bankruptcy.
The Chinese telecom giant will pay an initial fine of $892 million as part of the settlement, and will plead guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, among other charges, in the agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Department of Treasury and Department of Justice.
“The highest levels of management within the company approved the scheme,” and the company “repeatedly lied to and misled federal investigators,” said Mary McCord, who runs the Justice Department’s national security division.
The Commerce Department investigation followed reports by Reuters in 2012 that ZTE had signed contracts to ship millions of dollars worth of hardware and software from some of the best-known U.S. technology companies to Iran's largest telecoms carrier.
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(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Damn, I have a ZTE phone.
Hopefully, this will be the first of many companies that did this.
Now these A-holes in iran can send our technology back to us, one missile at a time.
This is side splitting funny. No doubt the CIA would have given’em the whole mess for free. Sort this out. The Iranians paid for Chinese owned US technology that is riddled with CIA spyware and now they Chinese are being fined for selling it.
Hopefully, the Obama/DOJ slush fund operation that was sending fines paid by big corporations, etc. to Leftist groups like La Raza instead of to the US Treasury, has been shut down.
About now some Iranians are reading Wiki Leaks Vault 7 and saying “We wuz robbbed”. The Chinese company’s officials are now looking for safe houses. And Wilbur Ross is LHAO.
I guess i am still mad at the CIA for spying on Trump but this spy novel crap.
Yes, to where are the fines to be directed? To US Government general fund is OK. To Chinese government or private entities, is NOT OK.
We all know where the funds should go...take $100 million and pay for the Commerce Department for the year or more...and put aside the rest, $1.1 billion towards paying for...
The Wall! ... Trump should even hold a press conference just to announce it. Tell me even some of his worst critics wouldn’t give him a high five.
Imagine the look on Wolf Blitzer’s face when he has to report that China is now paying for the wall. Priceless!!
My guess is directly to the UN.
Who gets the 1.2b? Gov?
Chinese treaty violations bump for later.....
IIRC, it goes into a “slush fund” for such things. We know how the Obama Administration funneled this money to NGOs that fed the money back to the Democrats. I don’t think President Donald Trump will do that.
Thanks
SSSSHHHHHHHHH!!! Don't connect the dots for them!
I designed parts for ZTE and Huawei. American team members were disturbed by having to work on these parts. We know our stuff would get into the wrong hands, whether Iranians or Chinese military.
But, we had managers who were H1Bs, Indian and Chinese.
Our own tech companies should be closely monitored and in some cases forbidden from supplying many of these foreign companies.
If you or I violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act we'd be in jail. The article says “The highest levels of management within the company approved the scheme,” and the company “repeatedly lied to and misled federal investigators.”
They've obviously got the goods on people in management. Someone should be going to jail!
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