WASHINGTON : UTStarcom Inc., a US telecom company, agreed
on Thursday to pay three million dollars in fines for bribing
Chinese officials with Hawaiian vacations and other junkets, US
officials said.
The Justice Department said UTSI had agreed to pay a
1.5-million-dollar fine for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act by providing "travel and other things of value" to employees of
state-owned Chinese telecom firms.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the Alameda,
California, company had agreed to pay an additional 1.5 million
dollars for authorizing millions of dollars in unlawful payments to
Asian government officials.
"UTStarcom spent millions of dollars on illegal bribes to win and
keep customers in Asia," Marc Fagel, director of the SEC's San
Francisco regional office, said in a statement.
"It is important for corporate America to recognize that resorting
to these methods of boosting profits contributes to a culture of
corruption that cannot be condoned under US law," he said.
The Nasdaq-listed UTSI sells telecommunications network equipment
and handsets and does business in China through its wholly-owned
subsidiary UTStarcom China Co. Ltd. (UTS-China).