Seagate pays 274 million euros settlement over exports to Huawei

Hard drive maker Seagate will pay a fine of 274 million euros for exporting HDDs to China’s Huawei, against American export restrictions. That amounts to 37.14 euros per exported disk.

Seagate exported 7.4 million drives between August 2020 and September 2021, while Huawei ended up on the US’s so-called Entity List. This lists companies with which no business may be done due to concerns for national security. That is also why Huawei can no longer use Android. Seagate was the only remaining hard drive supplier for Huawei; according to Reuters the other two were Western Digital and Toshiba, but they had stopped exports in time.

Seagate said in a response that it “believed it was in compliance with all restrictions at the time of the sales in question,” but that in this case “a settlement is the best option.” The US government states that Seagate wrongly thought that the restriction only applied to the final stage of the production process instead of the entire process.

Seagate must pay the settlement in installments: the equivalent of 13.7 million euros per quarter, spread over five years. It will also be given a conditional sanction; it will be banned from exporting for five years if it makes another mistake.