Huawei finance boss presents new arguments to fight extradition to US
Huawei chief financial officer (CFO) Meng Wanzhou is now arguing that the United States’ case which was submitted to Canada is “so replete with intentional and reckless error” that it violates her rights, Reuters reports.
Meng is fighting against being extradited to the US, which has charged her with bank fraud and accused her of misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business in Iran.
The latter accusation uses as key evidence a PowerPoint presentation given by Meng to an HSBC banker in 2013.
In the presentation, Meng refers to Skycom Tech as a ‘business partner,’ whereas the US describes it as an unofficial subsidiary.
Her lawyers claim that the US prosecutors have omitted important information discussed by Meng in the presentation – meaning that this evidence is misleading.
US claims that only junior HSBC employees knew of the relationship between Huawei and Skycom have also been contested by Meng’s lawyers.
They said it does not make sense that HSBC’s senior management would be unaware of the relationship between Huawei and Skycom since Huawei is one of HSBC’s largest clients.
A $900-million credit facility with HSBC allegedly provided Huawei was also denied.
The lawyers instead claim that of its $1.6-billion credit arrangement across 26 banks, HSBC’s portion was $80 million, was never used, and was cancelled in 2017.
Failed first attempt
These new arguments follow a failed first attempt by Meng’s lawyers to block her extradition.
Meng had argued that the US was purposefully disguising an allegation of sanctions violations as a fraud charge in order to get around Canada’s double criminality rule.
Her lawyers argued that if the transactions she was being held for had taken place in Canada, they would not have violated any local sanctions.
However, this argument was rejected, as the court ruled that fraud could still be prosecuted in Canada if a US bank was put at risk for violating US sanctions.
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