Huawei accused of secretly building North Korea’s phone network
China's Huawei has been accused of secretly helping North Korea build and maintain its telecoms network.
The company partnered with a state-owned Chinese firm, Panda International Information Technology, on projects in North Korea over at least eight years, according to The Washington Post.
Huawei employees are said by the Washington Post to have used coded terms to refer to their work in North Korea, including referring to the country as “A9” in an internal database, to provide equipment such as base stations and antennas.
A 2008 contract published by The Washington Post showed that telecoms equipment was transported to Dandong in China, where it was then allegedly transported by rail into North Korea.
Such a move would raise questions of whether Huawei, which has used US technology in its components, violated American export controls to furnish North Korea with equipment, according to the Post.
The US government unveiled criminal charges against Huawei in January in which it accused the firm of attempting to evade US sanctions against Iran by setting up a separate company called Skycom, which fraudulently conducted more than $100m (£76m) worth of transactions through the US financial system over four years.
Matthew Whitaker, who at the time was the acting US attorney general, said Huawei had lied to the US government to obstruct investigations, moved potential witnesses back to China, and misled banks to continue to process transactions.
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada last year in connection with the allegations. She now faces extradition to the US. Huawei has denied that it violated any laws.
The US government has lobbied allied countries to block the use of Huawei technologies because of concerns that its close relationship with the Chinese government could mean that its technology is used for espionage, an allegation which the company has denied.
A Huawei spokesman said "We have no business presence in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Huawei is fully committed to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including all export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, US, and EU.”
