Robert Bosch GmbH just wrote a $36 million check to the US government. The reason: the German engineering conglomerate spent four years shipping sensor technology and automotive software to Huawei without bothering to get the required export licenses.
The settlement, reached with the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), covers more than 100 unauthorized shipments worth over $72.4 million. Those shipments included Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensor products and automotive software, all sent to Huawei Technologies and its affiliates between September 16, 2020, and September 26, 2024.
What Bosch actually did
Huawei has been on the US Entity List since 2019, which means any company wanting to ship certain products to the Chinese telecom giant needs a specific license from BIS.
Bosch’s subsidiaries, including Bosch Sensortec GmbH and ETAS GmbH, apparently didn’t get that memo. Or chose to ignore it. Either way, the shipments kept flowing for four years across more than 100 separate occasions.
