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Seagate Technology Holdings plc, an American data storage company, was hit with a heavy fine for allegedly maintaining a business relationship with the Chinese tech firm Huawei. The company has been asked to pay a total of $300 million as a penalty for the said offense.
It can be recalled that Huawei has been blacklisted in the United States in 2020, and Seagate seemingly ignored this fact and continued to have an unauthorized connection with the Chinese firm. They are said to have a business deal worth $1.1 billion.
According to CNBC, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the $300 million settlement with Seagate on Wednesday this week. The huge penalty was described as the largest ever to be imposed by the Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which implements export controls against blacklisted companies in the country.
Moreover, the local regulators said that Seagate was the only supplier of hard drive disks (HDD) the storage firm reportedly delivered more than 7.4 million units of HDD to Huawei from Aug. 2020 to Sept. 2021. The federal watchdog also noted that Huawei and Seagate also tried to conceal their relationship.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Seagate will pay $300 million to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The payments will be in installments of $15 million per quarter in the span of five years, and the first installment is due in October this year.
“We believe entering this agreement with BIS and resolving this matter is in the best interest of Seagate, our customers and our shareholders,” Seagate’s CEO, Dave Mosley, said in a press release. “Integrity is one of our core values, and we have a strong commitment to compliance as evidenced by our global team of international trade compliance and legal professionals – complemented by external experts and outside counsel.”
Mosley added, “While we believed we complied with all relevant export control laws at the time we made the hard disk drive sales at issue, we determined that engaging with BIS and settling this matter was the best course of action.”
Photo by Alex Escu/Unsplash
