Huawei Executive Ms. Meng Wanzhou has accused the United States of providing a “grossly
inaccurate [and] misleading” summary of evidence to the Canadian court hearing her extradition
case, arguing that the case should be thrown out as a result.
The new claims in Meng’s bid to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face fraud charges include that
the U.S. misrepresented and omitted details of a crucial PowerPoint presentation that Meng
delivered to a HSBC banker in Hong Kong.
The 2013 presentation forms the basis of the U.S. claims that she defrauded HSBC by lying about
Huawei’s business in Iran, allegedly in breach of U.S. sanctions, and that she should be sent to
New York to face trial.
“Ms Meng will submit that the Requesting State’s summary of evidence is grossly inaccurate
and based on deliberate and/or reckless misstatements of fact and material omissions, thereby
constituting a serious abuse of the extradition process that should disentitle the Requesting
State to proceed,” her lawyers said in a memo, released on Monday by the Supreme Court of
British Columbia.
Meng was arrested by Canadian police, acting on a U.S. request, at Vancouver’s airport on
December 1st, 2018, throwing China’s relations with Canada and the U.S. into turmoil.
The new claims also allege that the U.S. falsely asserted that only junior HSBC employees were
aware of the nature of Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, a company in Iran that the U.S. says
conducted business there on behalf of Huawei.
“Evidence will demonstrate that it is inconceivable that any decision to modify or terminate
HSBC’s relationship with Skycom or Huawei would not have been reviewed by the most senior
management of HSBC,” said the memo.
The memo, dated Friday, was made public after a hearing in Vancouver to discuss the
management of Meng’s sprawling extradition case, which has been thrown into disarray by the
Covid-19 pandemic.
Meng’s team submitted a schedule that would see hearings last until at least May 25th, 2021,
while the Canadian government lawyers representing U.S. interests in the case proposed hearings
until March 26th. Appeals could ultimately stretch the case out for years. But Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes did not endorse either schedule and questioned the
order that both sides wanted various arguments addressed.
As a result, the hearing was adjourned until June 23rd, with Meng – who is Huawei’s chief financial
officer and the daughter of company founder, Mr. Ren Zhengfei – bound over until then.
Meng and both sets of lawyers attended Monday’s hearing by phone, as part of the court’s
Covid-19 precautions.
In the memo, Meng’s lawyers also take issue with “false statements” in the U.S. record of the case
that “as a result of [Meng’s] misrepresentations, HSBC extended USD$900 million of credit to
Huawei”.
“In fact, there never was a USD$900 million credit facility between Huawei and HSBC,” the memo
says. Instead, it says, HSBC and eight other banks jointly provided HSBC with a USD$1.6 billion
credit facility, of which HSBC’s contribution was US$80 billion.
The claims about misrepresentation in the U.S. record and supplemental record of the case –
summaries of evidence provided to the court – represent a new third branch of an abuse-of-
process argument by Meng’s lawyers.
The other two branches are that Meng was unlawfully searched and interrogated by Canadian
border officers at Vancouver’s airport at the behest of the U.S. FBI, before she was formally
arrested, and that the case is a matter of political abuse, highlighted by U.S. President Donald
Trump’s comments on it.
“This is a very unusual extradition case. It has been described as unique,” said one of Meng’s
lawyers, Richard Peck, at Monday’s hearing. “It does give rise to three arguments on abuse …
[one] in relation to the president of the requesting state and his assertion that he would
effectively do what he wanted with Ms. Meng, which we consider to be an outrageous
comment.”
That was a reference to comments made by Trump on December 11th, 2018, when he told Reuters
news agency that he would intervene in Meng’s case if it was in the interests of U.S. national
security or it helped the U.S. seal a trade deal with China.
“Whatever’s good for this country, I would do … If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the
largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security
– I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said.
Meng’s lawyers have seized on those comments as proof that the case against Meng is politically
inspired.
As part of the other plank of the abuse claim, Meng’s lawyers have described a report written by
Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) on the morning before her arrest, which they say
provides evidence of “coordinated state misconduct” between the U.S. and Canada against her.
The spy agency’s report predicted the impending detention would “send shock waves around the
world”, and stated that “advanced communication to the CSIS came from the FBI”. The report’s
existence was made public last week.
According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on
Monday that the CSIS report “shows once again that the whole Meng case is a serious
political incident. It speaks volumes about the U.S. political calculations to purposefully suppress
Huawei and other Chinese hi-tech companies.”
Meng’s arrest more than 18 months ago triggered a crisis in Chinese relations with the U.S. and
Canada. China arrested Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig and accused them of
espionage, moves that are widely believed in Canada to represent retaliation and hostage taking.
