The fine was imposed because the company supplied hard drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 after US export restrictions took effect. During this period, Huawei bought 7.4 million Seagate hard drives worth over $1.1 billion.
Seagate claimed that it misunderstood export regulations and that the products it shipped to Huawei were not of US origin because final assembly and testing was done elsewhere.
However, the Ministry of Commerce rejected this claim, stating that the origin of the hardware used to manufacture the hard drives is also important.
Seagate will now have to pay a $15 million penalty every three months for five years. The company has also agreed to perform three additional audits and will lose export privileges for up to five years.
Source: Ferra
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