Huawei investigated in France by the financial judiciary
Huawei is in the crosshairs of the magistrates of the French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF). The Chinese telecom giant confirmed that its offices in France were searched on Tuesday. “Huawei has cooperated fully with investigators and will continue to do so. Huawei has been operating in France for over 20 years and has always complied with all French laws and regulations,” the group said in a statement sent on Thursday. The group said it was "confident" about the conclusions of the investigation, revealed by an article in the online media L'Informé.
Suspicions of criminal offence
The proceedings concern suspicions of violations in the area of business integrity, a judicial source said on Thursday. However, it was not immediately possible to obtain further details on the accusations made against the company, whose French headquarters are located in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), a short walk from the Paris ring road. Integrity crimes include crimes such as corruption, influence peddling and taking illicit interests.
In April 2022 Challenges reported that, following a January 2021 report by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA) on possible abuse of company assets and tax fraud, a preliminary investigation into Huawei was opened in Nanterre, entrusted to the Paris Financial Brigade. However, on Thursday a judicial source clarified that "this is not an investigation started by Nanterre following a report from the AFA ".
Construction of a factory in Alsace
Huawei arrived in France in 2003, where the Chinese group opened six research centers and a global design center in Paris. It is currently building a factory in Alsace, its first outside China, with the aim of starting the production of equipment for mobile telecommunications networks which is expected to become operational by the end of 2025.
Huawei is the world's leading supplier of equipment for 5G, the fifth generation of mobile Internet, and boasts a 20% share of the French telecommunications infrastructure market, despite severe restrictions imposed by the so-called "anti-Huawei" law of 2019 , designed to protect French networks from the “risks of espionage, piracy and sabotage” enabled by 5G.
The construction of the French factory should have avoided the sanctions applied by both the USA and the EU, because it would have allowed these products to be classified as EU, thus updating the limitations. The company has for years been at the center of the sights of US authorities who fear that its infrastructure could be used for spin purposes by the Chinese government.
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The article Huawei investigated in France by the financial judiciary comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/huawei-indagato-in-francia-dalla-magistratura-finanziaria/ on Fri, 09 Feb 2024 09:07:02 +0000.