US government has been pushing sanctions against Iran, trying to isolate the country as much as possible. In a bid to accomplish this, the US government has strictly forbidden different companies from trading with Iran. However, it has now been found out that the Chinese manufacturer ZTE allegedly shipped American hardware and software products to Iran.
Naturally, this was enough to trigger the alarms in U.S. where the Department of Commerce has initiated an investigation against ZTE. Back in March, a report unveiled an agreement ZTE had signed according to which it would be shipping hardware such as printers and HP PC parts and software from Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec. The deal was worth $123.4 million and was signed in December 2010.
In April, Reuters reported that yet another contract was signed by ZTE in June 2011 according to which, ZTE was to provide products worth $10 million to Aryacell, a consortium with the Iranian government as a prominent partner. This second deal comprised of products such as Cisco switches, IBM servers and other US made products.
ZTE had earlier admitted that yes, it was trading with Iran and that it was trying to cut down on its businesses with Iran. The Aryacell deal, mentioned above, was also eventually abandoned by ZTE.
Whereas it will still take months for Department of Commerce to complete its investigations and reach a conclusion, it can eventually lead ZTE to pay a fine worth twice the size of the amount that was involved in the embargo to Iran. Also, so far no US companies have been found to be complicit, DoC says.
Source: Reuters
Courtesy: The Verge
[ttjad keyword=”android-phone”]
