Seagate to pay $300 million penalty for shipping Huawei 7 million hard drives

Source: Reuters

Seagate to pay $300 million penalty for shipping Huawei 7 million hard drives

Karen Freifeld
Wed, April 19, 2023 at 4:32 PM EDT·3 min read

Reuters) -Seagate Technology Holdings PLC has agreed to pay a $300 million penalty in a settlement with U.S. authorities for shipping over $1.1 billion worth of hard disk drives to China's Huawei in violation of U.S. export control laws, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday.

Seagate sold the drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 despite an August 2020 rule that restricted sales of certain foreign items made with U.S. technology to the company. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, a U.S. trade blacklist, in 2019 to reduce the sale of U.S. goods to the company amid national security and foreign policy concerns.

The penalty represents the latest in a string of actions by Washington to keep sophisticated technology from China that may support its military, enable human rights abuses or otherwise threaten U.S. security.

Seagate shipped 7.4 million drives to Huawei for about a year after the 2020 rule took effect and became Huawei's sole supplier of hard drives, the Commerce Department said.

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