Cadence Design Systems will pay over $140m in penalties for illegally exporting semiconductor design tools to a Chinese military university associated with China’s Central Military Commission. The company admitted to violating export controls by selling technology to NUDT, listed on the Entity List for developing supercomputers for military use.

Cadence’s criminal penalties amount to nearly $118m for exporting EDA tools without necessary licenses from February 2015 to April 2021. The company’s employees facilitated exports to NUDT through an alias, Central South CAD Center, concealing the true destination to avoid detection. Cadence also transferred contracts to Phytium Technology, linked with NUDT.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security announced a civil settlement with Cadence, imposing over $95m in penalties. Investigations revealed employees concealed exports’ true destination and used aliases in communications. The coordinated agreements will require Cadence to pay a total of over $140m in combined criminal and civil penalties and forfeiture, pending federal judge approval.

Read more at Yahoo Finance: Cadence to pay $140m fine for illegal tech exports to China