US Charged China’s Huawei With Racketeering

US Charged China’s Huawei With Racketeering

Huawei Technologies Co. and two of its U.S. subsidiaries were charged with racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to steal trade secrets in a federal indictment unsealed Thursday.

Federal prosecutors announced Thursday new criminal charges against Huawei and two of its U.S. subsidiaries, which included racketeering conspiracy charges and a charge of plotting to steal trade secrets from American companies.

Huawei also allegedly assisted Iran’s government in domestic surveillance during the 2009 demonstrations in Tehran and tried to conceal the scope of its business in North Korea, according to the indictment.

Chinese tech giant Huawei said new charges brought against the company by the U.S. Department of Justice were without merit and were part of an attempt to “irrevocably damage Huawei’s reputation and its business.”

“The US government will not prevail with its charges, which we will prove to be both unfounded and unfair”, Huawei said in a statement Friday morning.

Huawei is involved in a number of legal battles in the United States: Federal prosecutors indicted Huawei in Seattle on theft of trade secret charges relating to T-Mobile, which was also unsealed last January.

Chief Financial Officer MengWanzhou, charged with bank and wire fraud that were said to have violated U.S. sanctions on Iran, faces extradition to the United States. Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada in December 2018.

Source: CNBC