Enlarge / A Seagate office building on October 26, 2022 in Fremont, California. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

Seagate yesterday agreed to pay a $300 million fine for selling hard disk drives to Huawei, settling US government officials’ allegation that shipments to the Chinese company violated export controls imposed in 2020. The fine is “the largest standalone administrative penalty” ever issued by the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the agency said.

“Even after Huawei was placed on the Entity List for conduct inimical to our national security, and its competitors had stopped selling to them due to our foreign direct product rule, Seagate continued sending hard disk drives to Huawei,” Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod said.

As part of the settlement, “Seagate admitted to the conduct set forth in the Proposed Charging Letter involving Seagate US and Seagate Singapore,” the BIS said. Seagate violated the rule “by ordering or causing the reexport, export from abroad, or transfer (in-country)” of 7.4 million disk drives to Huawei without BIS authorization, the agency said.