The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) announced that it imposed a $60 million fine on T-Mobile earlier this year for violating a National Security Agreement (NSA).
CFIUS is an interagency committee that monitors foreign investment transactions in the United States for potential national security concerns. Its approval was required for T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint because Japan's SoftBank owned most of Sprint and Germany's Deutsche Telekom was Sprint's majority shareholder. T-Mobile.
CFIUS said that between August 2020 and June 2021 T-Mobile failed to take the necessary measures to prevent unauthorized access to certain sensitive data. In addition, the company failed to report the issue in a timely manner, thereby delaying its efforts to investigate and contain potential damage to national security assets.
According to CFIUS, these violations endangered the country's national security interests. T-Mobile has since worked with the Committee to improve its compliance procedures and has pledged to continue working with it to ensure compliance with its obligations in the future and “help protect the country and our customers”.
T-Mobile explained that technical problems that arose during the integration phase of the Sprint merger were behind the incidents. They were related to unauthorized access to some of the information that was released to law enforcement upon request.
This is the first time that CFIUS has announced the name of a company it has fined. Never before has the institute imposed such a large fine on a company. By announcing the fine, US authorities are setting an example and thereby reaffirming CFIUS's commitment to holding companies to their obligations.