Posted on 01/01/2003 4:21:50 PM PST by FreeSpeechZone
US: Boeing, Hughes Helped China Illegally
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Wednesday it had charged Hughes Electronics Corp. and Boeing Co.'s Satellite Systems unit with illegally sharing sensitive space technology with China in the 1990s that may have helped Beijing fine-tune its missiles.
The companies, which have long denied any wrongdoing in the case, were formally charged on Thursday with 123 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, said Lou Fintor, a department spokesman.
He said he did not know whether the 123 violations applied to each of the companies or represented a combined total.
Boeing and Hughes faced fines of up to $500,000 per charge and possible bars to getting U.S. export licenses if found guilty of the charges by a federal administrative judge and later, by a top State Department official, Fintor said.
Spokesmen for the companies did not return phone calls about the case, which began with a series of failed space launches in China starting in January 1995.
But the Washington Post, the first to report on the charges, quoted Robert Marsocci, a Hughes Electronics spokesman, as saying: "We're in negotiations with the State Department, and we'll be reviewing our options."
The State Department laid out its allegations in a Dec. 26 "charging letter" that was filed without public notice in the department's public reading room. The reading room was closed on New Year's Day.
Hughes officials are alleged to have given China detailed information about rocketry to help them figure out why their rockets were failing soon after launch.
Loral Space & Communications Ltd. announced last January that it agreed to pay $14 million in fines to settle charges that it had provided sensitive data to China after a Chinese rocket carrying a Loral satellite blew up in 1996.
Loral neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay $14 million in civil fines and spend $6 million over seven years to improve its compliance procedures.
"The department has had several rounds of discussion with Hughes and Boeing to explore a resolution similar to the one with Loral," Fintor said.
"We can note, however, that unlike Loral, Hughes and Boeing have both failed to recognize the seriousness of the violations and have been unprepared to take steps to resolve the matter, and to ensure no recurrence of violations in the future," he said.
Boeing is the top U.S. exporter and the third-biggest U.S. defense contractor after Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp.
In 2000, Boeing bought Hughes Electronics' satellite operations, the outfit alleged to have committed the arms-export violations with China. Hughes Electronics, the old parent corporation, now describes itself as the world's leading provider of digital television entertainment.
Big Deal! This is a chump change fine for TREASON! Until CEOs begin serving long stretches in jail, these crimes will continue. If it is the "Company" that is guilty, then why not prevent the "Company" from bidding on ANY DOD business for a long stretch?
Bull$hit.
What's also interesting is that the NK's No Dong bears a very striking resemblance to certain PRC long range rockets. Almost as if the Chinese had been training their scientists, and perhaps helped them with the design work. Of course, it could just be a wild coincidence.
Speaking of ironic, the longer range missiles will soon be able to reach the cities that Loral, Hughes, and Boeing are located in. No wonder Boeing packed out of Seattle and headed East.
LOL. I guess safety is the last refuge of a traitor.
Pretty funny .... you were kidding, right ....?
If the evening news was filled with video clips of people freaking out about it, ala Enron, Bush would have to do something, no matter how much Boeing pays the RNC, otherwise the liberals would use this against him in 2004.
Then watch as even more design work gets performed overseas. Face it, the US educates the world in math, engineering and science. The US babysits her young adults so that they graduate in five plus years with a relatively useless liberal arts, marketing, or a psychology degree.
With one motivation to move High Tech out of the US due to a lack of skilled workforce or at least one that will show up to work, we can add to the list, getting heavily fined for passing on TS technology.
Let's say that you were responsibile for running a company that exists to serve the data encryption community. Your primary objective is to stay solvent and keep the stock holders happy. To do that, your company is ready to come up with the best encryption algorithm the world has ever seen. Problem is, if developed by a US company then you won't be able to employ it anywhere but in approved countries. That means that those huge international conglomerate can't use your technology so tell your sales staff not to bother with trying to get those contracts. Nope, you have to work with those Mom & Pop's that don't do business with places like China. Like how many companies are there left that don't rely heavily on that Asian market?
Solution? Take your company's previous profits, invest them outside of the US in an overseas start-up. This saves you from having to pay taxes on the profits and on the dividends. This also is a great way to expatriate future profits because they are now made by a non-US company that doesn't have to pay US taxes or obey US regulation. By the way, your labor costs and your taxes are also extremely low. And if you are real smart, you will put this company in a country that is under a treaty with the US to receive protection from enemy nations so you have relative political stability. As an extra bonus you may even score some ImportExport Bank Loan guarentees so that you can loot the overseas company of any profits for your personal enjoyment and not have to worry about US overseers and regulators - or those pesky stockholder lawsuits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.