The U.S. Department of Justice on Feb. 13 filed new charges against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, accusing it, among other things, of stealing U.S. trade secrets and assisting the Iranian government to spy on protesters as well as illegally doing business with North Korea.

Specific charges include racketeering, theft of trade secrets and lying to investigators about these allegations.

The accusations include stealing “source code for internet routers, command line interface (a structure of textual commands used to communicate with routers) and operating system manuals” from six unnamed U.S. companies, assumed to include Cisco and Motorola.

These new charges build on former U.S. indictments accusing the company of violations of Iran sanctions in assisting the Iranian government to spy on anti-government protesters.

In January of 2019, the DOJ filed criminal charges against Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, including bank fraud, obstruction of justice and theft of technology.

Following the first round of indictments, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made clear the Trump administration’s stance:” For years, Chinese firms have broken our export laws and undermined sanctions, often using US financial systems to facilitate their illegal activities.”

Regarding Iran, the new charges state specifically, “Huawei’s business in Iran did violate laws and regulations, including sanction-related requirements, and included the provision of goods and services to the Iranian government, including surveillance technology used to monitor, identify and detain protestors during anti-government demonstrations in Teheran, Iran, in or about 2009,”

Huawei responded to the legal proceedings by stating: “This new indictment is part of the Justice Department’s attempt to irrevocably damage Huawei’s reputation and its business for reasons related to competition rather than law enforcement.”

Huawei is said to be ahead of other global providers such as Ericsson and Nokia in 5G technology in product offering, scale, and pricing. Its technology is already extensively in place in networks throughout the world including in those of America’s strongest allies, such as Great Britain which has chosen it based upon performance and cost issues. But Huawei is such a priority to the Trump administration that it is threatening to hold back on its much-trumpeted UK trade agreement if the UK does not dial back its dependence on Huawei’s 5G equipment.