US accuses China's largest cable manufacturer of violating export controls
Aug 10, 2022
Washington [US], August 10 : The United States has brought administrative charges against China's largest wire and cable manufacturer, stating that it had violated America's export controls by helping telecommunication company ZTE Corp. deliver banned technology to Iran, according to reports.
A charging letter by a bureau of the US Commerce Department said that Far East Cable Co., a company based in China's Jiangsu province, signed a contract with ZTE in an effort to conceal the telecommunication company's business with Iran, which relied on US-origin routers and microprocessors, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The investigation against Far East Cable was opened by US authorities into ZTE in 2012, as per the publication.
Meanwhile, ZTE in 2017 reached a series of settlements with federal prosecutors and the Commerce Department under which it admitted to violating US export control rules and sanctions on Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Commerce Department said that contracts signed with ZTE and Iranian telecommunications companies in 2013 and 2014 allowed Far East Cable to deliver US technology to ZTE's customers in Iran while obscuring ZTE's role in the transactions.
Earlier in a month, the former Chief Executive Officer of Mauritius Telecom (MT) Sherry Singh is accused of using selective bidding exercises to help the Chinese mega-firm Huawei, which already awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of rupees, to expand its business.
The 3G network in Mauritius has been largely developed by Huawei. The issue of the allocation of contracts to Huawei under the era of Sherry Singh, the former Chief Executive Officer of Mauritius Telecom has pointed toward the unholy alliance between the executive and the Chinese government.
Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has accused China of engaging in surveillance activities through Huawei. The FBI discovered that the Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest could capture and disrupt highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country's nuclear weapons, CNN reported citing sources.
Even though China denied the allegations of spying on the US, several sources have said that the Huawei equipment has the ability to intercept commercial cell traffic along with highly restricted airwaves that are used by the military and can disrupt critical US Strategic Command communications, allowing the country to spy on America's nuclear arsenal, it added.
"This gets into some of the most sensitive things we do. It would impact our ability to essentially command and control with the nuclear triad. That goes into the Bona Fide Determination (BFD) category. If it is possible for that to be disrupted, then that is a very bad day," a former FBI official had said.
