The U.S. government has slapped a record amount of fines on China’s telecommunication giant ZTE for violating U.S. sanctions against North Korea and Iran.
 
The U.S. Justice, Treasury and Commerce departments said Tuesday that one-point-19-billion U.S. dollars of fines were imposed on ZTE for selling U.S.-made electronic goods to Iran and the North.
 
They said ZTE agreed to plead guilty and pay the fines, the largest criminal fine in a U.S. sanctions case.
 
The settlement includes a 661-million dollar penalty to the U.S. Commerce Department. ZTE also agreed to additionally pay a 300-million dollar penalty to the department, but it will be suspended for seven years if the company complies with requirements in the settlement. 
 
ZTE, China’s second-largest maker of telecom equipment, was suspected of violating the U.S. Commerce Department’s sanctions by purchasing hardware and software products from U.S. companies such as Qualcomm and Micron Technology and reselling them to the North and Iran.
 
U.S. officials said that ZTE made 283 shipments of microprocessors, servers and routers to the North, although the values of those goods were yet to be disclosed.
 
The Chinese company was also known to have exported 32-million dollar worth of mobile phone network equipment to Iran from 2010 to 2016. 

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