Just days after the US banned companies from trading with ZTE for allegedly breaking a trade embargo against Iran and North Korea, WSJ reports multiple US government agencies are now investigating Chinese telecom giant Huawei for similar transgressions.
According to the report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Department of Commerce are conducting probes into whether the company was sending US technology to embargoed nations including Syria, Iran and North Korea.
US politicians, law-enforcement and the intelligence community at large have always expressed concerns about the close relations that most Chinese companies maintain with the country’s government. That being the case, most of them have been warning against buying Huawei’s smartphones, which has made the major carriers in the country back away from striking deals with the company, leading to an angry outburst at CES 2018 from the Huawei consumer division CEO Richard Yu.
Meanwhile, according to the WSJ, details about the investigation remains unclear, with no word from the government about what exactly it is looking at. It is also unclear how long the probe has been going on and how far it has progressed, and if indeed, the investigators have come across anything incriminating.
While a Huawei spokesperson declined to comment to the WSJ on the issue, the company later issued a statement to Engadget, saying that it plays by the rules everywhere it operates. According to the company, “Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including the applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, US and EU”.
