Bloomberg reported on November 22, that Huawei Technologies Co. is suing critics in France who alleged it has ties to the Chinese state. In an unprecedented move, the technology giant filed three defamation claims in Paris over comments made during television programs by a French researcher, a broadcast journalist and a telecommunications sector expert. The company’s legal actions in France were published on Tuesday in a report by La Lettre A, an online investigative newsletter. Huawei confirmed the claims, which it said were filed with French law enforcement authorities in March. Valerie Niquet, a researcher at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research that specializes in China and Japan, is a regular guest on French radio and television. Huawei filed the lawsuit after her comments in two television programs in February in which she said the company had ties to the state. Niquet was informed of the claims in September and then in November when the police reached out to her to confirm her comments, according to copies of the authorities’ emails seen by Bloomberg. Niquet said she confirmed her comments on TF1 television on Feb. 3, and similar remarks on France 5 television on Feb. 7. In those she alluded to the alleged control the Chinese state has over Huawei, also saying that “no one would have given a Soviet company the means to monitor all the communication in the Western world, and this is what we’re doing with Huawei.”
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