New Evidence Says US Misled Canada About Case Against Huawei’s CFO

By Staff, Agencies

Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, argues that the United States misrepresented her statements that served as the basis for charges of wire and bank fraud.

Lawyers for Meng submitted new evidence to a Canadian court suggesting that US prosecutors have mislead Canada about the case, Xinhua reported, citing new court filings.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 on a US warrant and is currently fighting extradition to the United States.

She is accused of lying to the bank HSBC about the nature of Huawei’s relationship with its Hong Kong affiliate Skycom. US prosecutors claim that Huawei used Skycom as a shell company to do business with Iranian telecommunications companies, in violation of sanctions the US had in place against Iran at the time.

Huawei and Meng, who is the daughter of the company’s founder, deny any wrongdoing and insist that Skycom was a separate business partner in Iran.

Meng’s charges are based on a 17-slide PowerPoint presentation she gave to a senior HSBC employee in August 2013, which describes the links between Huawei and Skycom as “normal business cooperation”.

According to Xinhua, Meng’s defense argues in a new filing that the US had intentionally omitted crucial parts of that presentation. These include her statements about “cooperative relationship with Skycom in Iran” and the “regulatory compliance measures Huawei was taking so as not to violate the US relevant export controls”.

The new disclosure says that Meng admitted during the presentation that Huawei had once held shares in Skycom and she was a director of the Hong Kong firm. By the time of the meeting, however, Huawei had sold all its shares and Meng stepped down as Skycom director, her lawyers claim.

Expert testimony included in this new filing also claimed, according to the report, that HSBC “only needed to understand that Huawei and Skycom had business cooperation in Iran to assess its own compliance risks” and didn’t need to be informed about their relationship in this case.

Meng’s defense team maintains that by not disclosing this information in their submissions to Canadian court, US prosecutors have been “seriously misleading” Canada about the case.

Meng’s lawyers on Thursday also accused US President Donald Trump of using the Huawei executive as a “bargaining chip” in his trade war with China.