Trump's comments about Huawei exec's arrest to take center stage in extradition fight
Meng's case has thrust Canada into the middle of a broader clash between the two superpowers.
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. | RichLam/Getty Images
By Andy Blatchford and Leah Nylen
Updated: 06/15/2020 11:55 AM EDT
President Donald Trump's musings about a trade deal with China will be under a legal microscope Monday as lawyers for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou formally allege her extradition case to the U.S. has been tainted by politics.
Meng, the Chinese telecom giant's chief financial officer, was arrested by Canadian police in December 2018 on an extradition request from the United States. Her case, based on fraud charges connected to her alleged violation of U.S. sanctions on Iran, has infuriated Beijing and damaged the Canada-China diplomatic relationship.
However, during a 2018 interview, Trump said he would be willing to intervene in Meng's case if it would help the U.S. secure a trade deal with China or serve other American national security interests — comments her defense team plans to seize on to prevent her extradition before a court in Vancouver on Monday, according to a source with close knowledge of the plans.
"The politicization [focus], primarily, is about this not being a criminal case, but rather a political case," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter in public.
Last month, a British Columbia judge threw out Meng's request to be discharged from the process after ruling the case against her satisfied the "double criminality" test, which says countries may only hand over someone on an allegation that is a criminal offense in their own jurisdiction.
Meng's case has thrust Canada into the middle of a broader clash between the two superpowers, including retribution from China that halted some imports of key Canadian agricultural products like canola seed. The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa also slammed a decision by a B.C. court last month that prevented Meng's release, calling her case "a grave political incident" and warned Canada "not to go further down the wrong path."
In the days after her arrest, Canadians Michael Kovrig, a diplomat on leave, and businessman Michael Spavor were rounded up in China on allegations of endangering the country's national security. Both men remain behind bars in China with limited access to consular services and almost no contact with their families — treatment Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said is in "retaliation" for Canada's independent judicial system. Trudeau has sought help from the international community, including from the Trump administration, to press China for their release.
The defense team is expected to argue a secret document from Canada's spy agency, completed hours before Meng's arrest, provides evidence of "coordinated state misconduct" between the U.S. and Canada, according to a motion filed earlier this month by her lawyers.
The motion argues the two-page document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will bolster the argument she is a victim of an abuse of process involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada Border Services Agency, in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and with apparent knowledge of officials in the office of the Attorney General of Canada.
They "engaged in a pattern of misconduct involving serious allegations of Ms. Meng's rights … by engaging in a pre-planned scheme to have the CBSA misuse its special powers of compulsion for an improper purpose to compel evidence from [Meng] for the RCMP and, ultimately, for the FBI," the motion says.
Her defense team, said the source, will argue her rights were violated because, upon her arrival, she was allegedly questioned about the Iran sanctions while her electronic devices and bags were searched under the pretext of customs procedures.
U.S. prosecutors this year expanded their case against Huawei, alleging the company engaged in a broad conspiracy to steal technology from American firms. The case doesn't name the U.S. companies, but the conduct described in the indictment matches allegations in civil suits brought against Huawei by T-Mobile, Cisco, Motorola, wireless antenna developer Quintel and CNEX Labs, a solid-state storage technology company backed by Dell and Microsoft's venture arms. Prosecutors argue Huawei violated economic sanctions on North Korea, in addition to Iran.
But accusations of political entanglements in the case are hardly a fringe view. John McCallum was fired from his job as Canada's ambassador to China in January 2019 after he publicly suggested Meng had "quite a strong case," in part because of "political involvement by comments from Donald Trump in her case."
According to court papers filed in the U.S., lawyers for Huawei have said they can't defend the company without the assistance of Meng, who as CFO, allegedly misled the bank HSBC about Huawei's relationship with the firm that sold telecom equipment in Iran and North Korea. "Literally no other human being is identified in the core fraud and sanctions allegations," they said.
Huawei's U.S. lawyers have also raised questions about the role of HSBC. The U.K.-based bank agreed in 2012 to forfeit $1.23 billion and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice to resolve charges that it illegally conducted transactions on behalf of customers in countries subject to U.S. sanctions, including Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. As part of its agreement, HSBC pledged to hire a monitor to oversee its future compliance efforts.
Huawei's attorneys allege that prosecutors agreed to overlook HSBC's continued misconduct in exchange for assistance prosecuting a case against the Chinese telecom.
U.S. prosecutors have not responded publicly to the allegations about HSBC, but they maintain that Meng shouldn't be allowed to use documents turned over in the U.S. case to aid her challenge to extradition in Canada. The judge in the case is set to hear from both sides at a July 9 hearing.
U.S. prosecutors filed sealed charges against Huawei in August 2018, alleging the company misled U.S. bankers about its business in Iran and stole trade secrets from T-Mobile related to a robot used to test devices. Those charges were unsealed in January 2019 after Meng's arrest in Vancouver.
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