Chinese telecoms giant company ZTE, that pleaded guilty three years ago to violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea, is the subject of a new bribery investigation at the US Justice Department, centred on suspected bribes paid to foreign officials to gain advantages in its worldwide operations according to NBC News.
A spokesman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did the company.
ZTE pleaded guilty in 2017 and paid nearly US$900 million to settle with the US after an investigation found the telecommunications equipment maker conspired to evade US embargoes by buying US components, incorporating them into ZTE equipment and illegally shipping them to Iran.
A year later, the Trump administration slapped a ban on US companies selling goods to the company after it determined ZTE made false statements about disciplining 35 employees tied to the sanctions violations.
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The ban was lifted in 2018 after the company paid a US$1 billion penalty to the US Treasury and put another US$400 million in escrow.
In Kenya, for example, a document published by WikiLeaks in 2010 raises questions about how ZTE won a 2009 contract to install landline telephone monitoring equipment for the country’s National Intelligence Service. What appears to be a report from then-U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger to the State Department states that ZTE received the contract after paying kickbacks to high-level officials of the National Intelligence Service (then known as the National Security Intelligence Service), including one who received $5,000 a month, which he used to pay medical bills.
The document was among more than 250,000 classified State Department cables leaked to WikiLeaks and later made public. Chelsea Manning was convicted in military court of stealing the cables.
ZTE is the smaller rival to China’s Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker. Huawei has been on the Commerce Department’s entity list since May, which means US companies are restricted from selling goods and technology to the company.
In Uganda, the sister company ZTE Corporation Uganda earlier at the beginning of the year launched the first pilot test for the new 5G technology with MTN adding Uganda to the list of the only 3 African countries to ever pilot test the future technology. In the wake of new allegations, we hope this doesn’t compromise the position and pace that they had started at the beginning of 2020.
