US DOJ updates their indictment against Huawei for RICO violations

In January 2019 last year the US Department of Justice charged Huawei and a number of US subsidiaries with a large number of offences, including money laundering, bank fraud and more.

Now the DoJ has updated their indictment with charges of racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

The indicted defendants include Huawei and four official and unofficial subsidiaries — Huawei Device Co. Ltd. (Huawei Device), Huawei Device USA Inc. (Huawei USA), Futurewei Technologies Inc. (Futurewei) and Skycom Tech Co. Ltd. (Skycom) — as well as Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Wanzhou Meng (Meng).

The new superseding indictment also contains the charges from the prior superseding indictment, which was unsealed in January 2019.

The DOJ is accusing Huawei of stealing trade secret information and copyrighted works, such as source code and user manuals for internet routers, antenna technology and robot testing technology.

The DoJ claims Huawei entering into confidentiality agreements with the owners of the intellectual property and then violating the terms of the agreements by misappropriating the intellectual property for the defendants’ own commercial use.

They also said Huawei recruited employees of other companies and directing them to misappropriate their former employers’ intellectual property, and using proxies such as professors working at research institutions to obtain and provide the technology to the defendants.

They also said Huawei launched a policy instituting a bonus program to reward employees who obtained confidential information from competitors. The policy made clear that employees who provided valuable information were to be financially rewarded.

In many ways, the accusations sound like standard practice for large technology companies in Silicon Valley, raising the question for political motivation for the prosecution. Huawei has recently been the renewed centre of the controversy around the use of their 5G technology in UK and elsewhere, despite USA advocating strongly against it.

The full indictment can be read here.

via Zack Whittaker