By Diana Ondicho
The U.S. government has finally taken action on more than a decade of accusations against the Huawei Company at a time of particularly strained for U.S.A- China relations. On Thursday, a public relations executive was arrested on spying charges in Poland , and the U.S. Commerce Department blocked shipment of the company’s equipment back to Hong Kong this week. This is on top of the continuing saga of the December arrest of the company’s top finance executive
Huawei has been accused of spying, trade secrets theft and sanctions violations by U.S. intelligence. It has denied the bulk of these allegations. The company argues that their executives have never faced formal charges of spying. This changed when a prominent Huawei executive was arrested and detained.
The Huawei management has denied any involvement and they said that the charges relate to the individual actions and not for Huawei.
On May 15th, the Trump administration shook the tech world by banning Huawei from doing business with US companies severing business with the world’s second-largest smartphone maker. Microsoft has removed Huawei’s Mate Book X Pro laptop from its online store, in reaction to the ban.
Google too reacted, saying that it would stop providing Huawei with technical support. Additionally, upcoming versions of Huawei’s phones outside China would no longer get access to Google’s Play Store app marketplace and its marquee slate of services, including YouTube and Gmail.
The move was temporarily reversed on Tuesday after the US said it would issue a 90-day license for US mobile companies to figure out long-term solutions.