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ZTE has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges of violating US sanctions on North Korea and Iran and to pay up to $1.2bn in fines, the largest sanctions-busting penalty levied against a Chinese company by Washington.
中兴(ZTE)同意承认违反美国对朝鲜和伊朗制裁的刑事指控，将支付最高12亿美元的罚金，这是美国针对中国公司违反美国制裁措施开出的最大一笔罚单。
The Chinese telecoms group also admitted to obstructing a federal investigation as part of a probe announced yesterday after more than a year of talks with the US government. Those talks accelerated after US officials seized the laptop of a ZTE lawyer as her husband tried to leave the US, resulting in a trove of documents that laid bare what officials called a brazen conspiracy to get around US sanctions.
在昨日宣布的一项调查中，这家中国电信集团还承认曾阻碍联邦调查，在双方达成和解之前，中兴与美国政府进行了一年多的谈判。美国官员在一名中兴律师的丈夫试图离开美国时没收了这名律师的电脑，获取了一批文件，官员们称，这些文件暴露了绕过美国制裁的无耻阴谋。这之后双方谈判加快。
The investigation was begun under the Obama administration, which placed the company on a list of banned entities in March 2016, in effect prohibiting US suppliers from doing business with the world’s fourth-largest telecoms equipment supplier. But the administration of Donald Trump quickly seized on the case as an example of how it planned to get tough on China and others it accused of cheating on trade.
调查是在奥巴马执政时开始的，2016年3月，美国政府将中兴列入被禁实体清单，实际上禁止美国供应商与这家全球第四大电信设备供应商开展业务。但唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)政府迅速将此案当作典型，以表明其计划对美国指控开展欺诈贸易的中国和其他国家强硬起来。
“We are putting the world on notice: the games are over,” said billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, who became Mr Trump’s commerce secretary.
亿万富翁投资者、担任特朗普商务部长的威尔伯?罗斯(Wilbur Ross)表示：“我们正提请全世界注意：这种游戏结束了。”
ZTE warned in a filing last month that it faced a hefty fine in the US. The terms of the deal, which must be approved by a court, call for immediate fines of $892m and a further $300m in penalties to be suspended for seven years as ZTE’s compliance with the deal is monitored.
上月，中兴在一份申报文件中警告称，该公司在美国面临巨额罚金。和解协议要求中兴立即支付8.92亿美元罚金，还有3亿美元暂缓7年支付，期间中兴遵守协议的情况将受到监督，该协议尚待法院批准
“ZTE acknowledges the mistakes it made, takes responsibility for them, and remains committed to positive change in the company,” Zhao Xianming, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
中兴董事长兼首席执行官赵先明在一份声明中表示：“中兴通讯承认违反美国出口管制相关法律法规，愿意承担相应的责任。公司将继续积极致力于变革。”
Mr Zhao was appointed last April as part of shake-up of ZTE’s management in the wake of the US charges. Under his leadership, the company said it had created a new compliance committee and appointed a US lawyer to monitor its compliance with global export controls.
去年4月，在美国提出指控后，作为中兴管理层调整的一部分，赵先明临危受命。中兴表示，在他的领导下，该公司组建了新的合规委员会，并任命了一位美国律师监督该公司对全球出口管制的遵守。
But according to US officials those moves came only after investigators, who spent five years looking into the company’s dealings with Iran and North Korea, seized the company lawyer’s laptop following a tip from a ZTE insider.
但据美国官员称，这些举措是在调查人员得到中兴内部人员密报没收该公司律师笔记本电脑后才出现的，调查人员花费了5年时间，调查中兴与伊朗和朝鲜的业务往来。
Files on the computer, officials said, documented an “egregious” conspiracy that saw the ZTE ship tens of millions of dollars in mobile phones and mobile phone chips containing restricted US technology to North Korea and similar cellular network equipment to Iran.
美国官员们表示，这台电脑上的文件记录了一个“令人震惊”的阴谋，中兴将数千万美元的包含受限美国技术的手机和手机芯片销往朝鲜，并将类似的蜂窝网络设备销往伊朗。
To do so, ZTE used “isolation companies” to hide the use of restricted US-made components and left any mention of those parts off customs declaration forms. At one point, US officials said, ZTE had 13 employees assigned to a unit ordered to “sanitise” internal communications to remove any potentially incriminating evidence. It also restarted shipments to Iran while it was being probed and caused its own lawyers to lie unwittingly to US officials by denying any wrongdoing.
为了这么做，中兴利用“壳公司”隐藏美国生产的受限零配件的使用，并且未在报关时提及这些零配件。美国官员表示，中兴曾委派13名员工加入一个部门，命令他们“净化”内部通信，以去除所有可能暴露罪行的证据。中兴还在接受调查期间再度向伊朗输送产品，并导致自己的律师否认该公司存在任何不当行为，无意中对美国官员撒了谎。
