Seagate Fined $300 Million for Shipping 7 Million Hard Drives to Huawei

Seagate has been ordered to pay a £300 million penalty for shipping over 7 Million hard drives to Huawei in violation of U.S Export control laws.

Seagate Fined $300 Million

According to the report from Reuters Seagate has been fined by US authorities for shipping over $1.1 billion worth of HDDs between August 2020 and September 2021. This fine is in place over a violation of US export control laws which forbid the sale of certain foreign items made with U.S. technology to Huawei amid security and foreign policy concerns. A year after this rule was in effect Seagate shipped around 7.4 million hard drives to the company and it was mentioned that competitors Western Digital and Toshiba both restricted sales immediately.

Why Did Seagate Continue Selling?

Seagate argued against the US government and argued that its foreign-made drives were not subject to US export control regulations as they were not products of US equipment in a statement, the CEO Dave Mosley said:

“While we believed we complied with all relevant export control laws at the time we made the hard disk drive sales at issue, we determined that … settling this matter was the best course of action,”

Unfortunately for Seagate, their arguments weren’t enough and they have been slapped with the $300 million penalty which will be paid in instalments of £15 million per quarter over five years as well as three audits of its compliance program and a five-year suspended order denying its export privileges.

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