The ViewHuawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest: why business executives the world over should be held to account

Richard Harris says while it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the Huawei CFO’s detention is a trade war escalation, businesspeople are arrested every week, with little public outcry, and those at the top must take responsibility for their actions

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Huawei chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou leaves her home, escorted by a security guard, in Vancouver on December 12. Photo: The Canadian Press via AP

Published: 1:00am, 14 Dec 2018Updated: 2:31pm, 14 Dec 2018

It’s amazing that the story that knocked Brexit off the international front pages wasn’t Donald Trump’s impeachment, or that Santa Claus is real, but the arrest of the unknown Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei.

After being been arrested on US fraud allegations in Canada, this rather private businesswoman has had her 15 minutes of fame. Her lifestyle, which looks like any rich Canadian with two homes in Vancouver, has been plastered across the globe.

China retaliated so aggressively that you couldn’t help thinking that, to paraphrase Hamlet, “they doth protest too much!” Various official voices called the arrest “unjust” and “vile”. Canada was accused of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people” and acting “against human rights”. The tabloid Global Times was beside itself, frothing that the detention of the 46-year-old family woman was a “declaration of war”.

The context is, of course, fascinating. The Chinese side is convinced that it is a trade-war-induced conspiracy. It is much more likely to be an American cock-up where one side doesn’t know what the other is doing.

The fact that it began with a tip-off from an independent supervisor working through a bank’s historical records, who would have reported irregularities to bank regulators, who reported to the police, who would follow up the allegation, is tough to accept for the conspiratorial mindset. Yet it is believable because Trump is indicating that she might be released.

Individuals can only be extradited from Canada through the even-handed rule of Canadian law. The process meant that it took just US$7.5 million in bail for Meng to be free to prepare her defence in the comfort of one of her own Vancouver homes.