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HP Accused of Illegal Exportation To Iran
AdamWeeden writes "According to research done by the Boston Globe, HP has been secretly using a third-party company to sell printers to Iran. This is illegal under a ban instituted in 1995 by then US President Bill Clinton. The third-party company, Redington Gulf, operates out of Dubai and previously stated on their web site that the company began in 1997 with 'a team of five people and the HP supplies as our first product, we started operations as the distributor for Iran,' though now the site has been changed to remove the mention of Iran. Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?"
The military is run very much like any other enterprise; cell phones, fax machines, computers, and -printers-. lots of paperwork. a big part of the military is moving data/information, documenting it, getting it in front of people to make decisions. alot of paying bills, aquiring supplies, etc.
anything that helps a business run pretty much helps the military run. the better it is, the more efficient the war machine is.
(although im sure some vets would disagree the paperwork helps anything... haha.. but you get the idea)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I don't work for HP, but I do work for a large company that has more business abroad than here in the states.
I would have to say without any doubt that this had to be done unknowingly because at the company where I work they stress to each employee not to work with certain companies (and Iran is on the list) because if we do we will be in violation of US Export laws and the US government could decide that we can't export anything to any other country. That would cause me and just about every other person in my comany to lose their jobs.
So, yeah, based on the risks of a US based company exporting to a country that the US government has sanctions against, there is absolutely no way at all that HP management knowingly shipped to Iran.
HP recently acquired EDS.
EDS holds the contract for NavyMarineCorpsIntranet.
aforementioned contract is up for renewal soon.
I can't imagine this helping EDS, An HP Company to re-win the contract.
Around 1998 I got hired by a company that manufactured medical lab equipment. Just before I started, they got a HUGE order from Iraq, which at the time, was under UN embargo and the scandal-ridden oil-for-food program.
The type and quantity of equipment that was ordered was ASTOUNDING, and sent alarm bells off through-out my organization. This was an enormous order, which amounted to about 70% of our typical annual production (world-wide) for the specific products. On top of that, there was a second order for spare parts to fully rebuild 2/3 of the original order. The equipment was specifically designed to grow bacterial and viral cultures on a very large scale for research. 60 Minutes had just done an investigative report on Saddam's chief biological weapons expert, who to most western news was only known as "Dr. Germ".
Our organization was struggling, and we really needed the revenue. To the workers on the floor, it meant that the lay-offs had stopped, for the moment.
I was dismayed that the organization was not in the position just reject the order on principle. Instead, they submitted the order to Clinton Administration's Commerce Department and set up a contingency plan to sell the equipment through multiple intermediary companies if permission was denied. Our CEO then made a large donation to the Democratic National Committee, and magically the sale was approved and blessed by the Commerce Department as "Humanitarian Medical Equipment", which it clearly was not.
Many can claim that no WMD's were found in Iraq, but I have a very good insight to the scale of the program that they had put in place. Almost all politicians have a price, and none are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Where there is money to be made, the barriers can be overcome.
One would think that HP's consumer goods could not be easily adapted to nefarious purposes (beyond counterfeiting), but you never know. Most laser printers do contain processors that are far beyond the capability allowed to pass through the embargo. Desperate people become very resourceful.
-- Len
"Everyone does it!"
(( The following may or may not be fiction ))
I have personally witnessed similar activities being attempted by EFTDatalink/Amstar Systems (both entities run by the same people) trying to set up ATM based money transfers between the US and Mexico... yes... if your first thought was "drug money laundering" then you wouldn't be alone because talks with various money handling entities refused to talk to Amstar Systems about it and simply walked out of talks with the company's executives. "Amstar Mexico" was pursuing business activities in ALL of central and south america and CUBA. Amstar Mexico is free to deal with whoever they want... they are a Mexican company and they don't have those restrictions as far as I know.
Of course, all of the statements I just made are mostly based on my own recollection and may be inaccurate. My last contact with the operators of the company was well over 10 years ago. I believe my memory is accurate enough but should be treated as speculation or even as fiction. One of the executives at the time was an arrogant asshole of a lawyer and who knows what he might try to do to me if Slashdot offers little to no protection regarding my identity.
Don't think Iran is anything like Afghanistan or Iraq. It is among the most developed countries in the Middle-East and Central Asia, and definitely the one with the best-educated population.
FWIW, that's an honor that Iraq was in competition for, back before the embargoes.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Just before the islamic revolution, the Shah had acquired US made bank note printing presses, the exact same used to make US dollars. So they can already make the most real fake notes
The Shah has been out of power for close to 30 years. The look and technology of U.S. currency has changed much in that time. There is much more to it than just the presses.
Being an oil-exporting nation, isn't it likely that Iran has enough cash without resorting to fake currency?
Trade restrictions and currency are separate issues.
I understand that this is tongue in cheek post, but in practice, I've found that a lost of fellow Westerners don't realize what Iran is - they think it's an authoritarian theocracy (correct), and therefore overly backwards and often lumped together with the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq (not correct). Iran has a population of 70 million people, a rather well developed economy and industry (not just machinery, but advanced stuff like pharma and biotech). Its military industry is strong enough to design and produce pretty much the whole range of military equipment, from assault rifles and tanks to fighter planes and submarines.
Hmm.. san act of war. I guess it would be an act of war when they jack up the tariffs so that their citizens prefer buying their domestic crap over our now artificially expensive exported crap too. Right? I mean anything to break the free market is an act of war right? That's what your saying isn't it.
The embargo is there because Iran can't play well with others and it's attempting to obtain Nuclear weapons so it doesn't have to listen to people telling them to play nice. It isn't just the US, almost all of Europe is telling them to drop the Nuclear ambitions too. Iran sponsors terrorism and if you think it is ok because they are only killing the jews right now, just wait until they run out of the jews and start looking for you. By then, you will know what an act of war is. And it won't be something as petty and not being able to make a buck because the world don't wasn't some country to go Nuclear or have vast resources availible to it when sponsoring terrorists who are just as happy killing you the innocent civilian as they are those damn innocent civilian jews..