2024-04-30 19:16:58
Text: Editorial Cuba Noticias 360
Three million dollars in fines for violating the sanctions imposed by the US government on Russia, Cuba, Iran and Syria, the technology giant Microsoft will have to pay to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), dependent on the Department of the Treasury.
A report from this department highlights that between July 2012 and April 2019, Microsoft incurred 1,339 violations of multiple sanctions programs and 54 have to do with OFAC’s Cuban asset control regulations.
In fact, entities of the multinational sold or activated software licenses as well as provided related services from servers and systems located in the United States and Ireland to software defined networks (SDN), blocked persons and other users located in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia and the Crimea region.
The report clarifies that the total value of these sales and related services amounted to $12,105,189.
The newspaper Wall Street Journalreports, in this regard: “Microsoft takes export control and sanctions compliance very seriously, so after learning of detection failures and violations by some employees, we voluntarily disclosed them to the appropriate authorities. ”.
All of this is related to Microsoft’s third-party distribution and resale programs. In the case of Russia, the multinational carried out an indirect resale model in Russia to develop opportunities and negotiate wholesale sales. But employees of the Russian subsidiary evaded the company’s detection controls to prevent the identity of these end customers from being known.
They also point out some deficiencies in Microsoft’s processes for evaluating whether its clients were included in the OFAC blacklist.
This is not the first time that the company has been sanctioned by OFAC for violating its regulations in countries like Cuba. A little over a year ago, Airbnb was fined almost $100,000 for operations considered to violate the blockade of Cuba.