Chinese wireless equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co (華為) said its office in France was searched as part of a preliminary investigation by French financial prosecutors.
The probe is into suspicions of “atteinte a la probite,” a justice ministry official said on Thursday, referring to a catch-all term that could include corruption, misuse of public funds or influence peddling, among other infractions. He declined to provide any further details on the alleged actions.
Huawei France, which is based near Paris, said in an e-mailed statement that the search occurred on Tuesday at its office. It added that it had cooperated fully with the investigations and would continue to do so.
Photo: AFP
“Huawei has been in France for over 20 years, and has been in compliance with all the French laws and regulations,” the company said in the statement. “While Huawei France does not wish to comment on an ongoing investigation, the company remains confident about its conclusions.”
French news Web site l’Informe first reported the probe.
Huawei has research centers in France and is currently building its first production factory outside of China in a town near Strasbourg. In December last year, Huawei France’s co-head Minggang Zhang (張明剛) told radio station France Inter that the factory, which is to produce telecommunications equipment for European markets, is scheduled to open at the end of next year and should employ 500 people in the long run.
Still, a decision by France to keep the company out of some integral parts of its wireless infrastructure, which prompted operators to begin to remove equipment in cities, has weighed on Huawei’s revenue in the country.
Filings by Huawei Technologies France show that the unit’s revenue in the country declined to 992 million euros (US$1.1 billion) in 2022, the most recent year available, from 1.4 billion euros in 2019.
Huawei is still working with French mobile phone carriers, SFR, a unit of Altice France, and Bouygues to deploy their 5G networks, Zhang said in December.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its