According to “Wall Street Journal” the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating whether Huawei has violated Iran’s sanctions order. This opened up a new way for the U.S. to review halting Huawei’s business in the country on the grounds of national security. It is unclear to what extent the U.S. Department of Justice has advanced its investigation and the specific allegations against Huawei are not known for now. However, informed sources claims that before the U.S. Justice Department launched a criminal investigation against Huawei, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Overseas Assets Control Office of the Ministry of Finance had issued an administrative summons to Huawei on sanctions-related issues.
Gizchina News of the week
It is worth noting that the investigation by the US Department of Justice had not been publicly reported and the criminal investigation means that there may be a more serious degree of possible violations by Huawei, which may be subject to severe administrative penalties and regulatory sanctions. As of now, Huawei has not commented on this issue, but its impact has quickly become manifest.
After this report broke out, the share prices of the US semiconductor giants fell collectively, with NVIDIA falling by 3%, AMD falling by 3.4%, while Qualcomm and Xilinx both fell by about 0.5%. In addition, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 0.7%, having dropped for the fifth consecutive day and it fell more than 9% in the past week.
