China's ZTE Pleads Guilty, Will Pay $1.19 Billion For Violating US Trade Sanctions

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp will plead guilty and pay $1.19 billion ($892 million in the Iran case) to settle allegations it violated U.S. laws that restrict the sale of American-made technology to Iran and North Korea, the company and U.S. government agencies said on Tuesday. ZTE entered into an agreement to plead guilty to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, obstruction of justice and making a material false statement, the U.S. Justice Department said. 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. Between January 2010 and January 2016, ZTE directly or indirectly shipped approximately $32 million of U.S.-origin items to Iran without obtaining the proper export licenses from the U.S. government. ZTE then lied to federal investigators during the investigation when it insisted that the shipments had stopped, Justice said. It also took actions involving 283 shipments of controlled items to North Korea, authorities said. Shipped items included routers, microprocessors and servers controlled under export regulations for security, encryption and anti-terrorism reasons.