Over the past dozen years, “Hewlett-Packard has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of printers and other products to Iran through a Middle East distributor, sidestepping a U.S. ban on trade with the country,” San Jose Mercury News reports.
Now the person “who headed HP for much of that time, Carly Fiorina, is ramping up to run for U.S. Senate” amidst questions “about what Fiorina knew about HP’s growing presence in Iran during her six-year tenure at the Silicon Valley firm from 1999 to 2005.”
Fiorina, a Republican who is gearing up to challenge three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, declined an interview request. But she issued a statement through her campaign spokeswoman saying that she was unaware of any sales to Iran during her time at the company.
“It is illegal for American companies to do business in Iran,” the spokeswoman, Beth Miller, wrote. “To her knowledge, during her tenure, HP never did business in Iran and fully complied with all U.S. sanctions and laws.”
A recent response to a government inquiry could refute that denial, however.
Securities and Exchange Commission issued a letter to HP seeking information about the company’s dealings in Iran, Syria and Sudan. HP responded that in fiscal 2008 about $120 million worth of products were sold to Iran by a Dutch subsidiary through a Middle Eastern distributor. But even as the company claimed that those sales were legal because its subsidiary was acting on its own, HP in January announced it was severing ties with Dubai-based Redington Gulf. The distributor had sold HP products to Iran since 1997, two years after the United States imposed a complete ban on exports to Iran.
But one expert “who represents firms seeking to comply with trade laws said he would be surprised if a company as large and sophisticated as HP did not take pains to insulate its U.S. operations from any sales to Iran.”
It had to be heavily vetted,” said Douglas Jacobson, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg. As long as the sales were conducted by an entity outside the country and without knowledge or help from a U.S. employee, he said, the transactions pass legal muster.
Any legal clearance is a far cry from how the situation will play politically though.
Congress in Your Pocket
