Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers say Canadian police ‘bookends’ prove FBI involvement in arrest of Huawei executive
- The court hearing dealing with Meng’s request to obtain more government documents before her extradition trial has ended
- Presiding judge sets a deadline for crown lawyers to complete five police officers’ affidavits about whether they shared information with the FBI
Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou said on Thursday that newly disclosed documents show the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent technical identification codes of her phones and other devices to the FBI, which American investigators could have used to get information of calls made and received and even the content of text messages.
The Huawei chief financial officer and her legal team have been in British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver since September 23 for a hearing dealing with the defence’s request to obtain more documents from Canadian government lawyers in advance of her extradition trial, set to start in January. That hearing concluded on Thursday.
The United States is seeking Meng’s extradition to face trial for allegedly defrauding HSBC by misleading the bank about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran. On December 1, Meng was arrested at the Vancouver airport during a stopover from Hong Kong on her way to Mexico.
The current hearing has focused on claims by Meng's lawyers that her rights were abused when she was searched and questioned by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers in the three hours before she was arrested.
They depict her search and the seizure of her electronic devices and their passwords as evidence of a “covert criminal investigation” on behalf of the FBI, conducted in defiance of a court order that she be arrested “immediately”.
Meng’s lawyer Scott Fenton said the discovery of the RCMP correspondence provides two “bookends” showing FBI involvement, starting with the American request for Meng’s arrest and instructions from the FBI to the RCMP about obtaining the phones and computers and how to handle them.
Then, Fenton said, a December 4 email sent between two RCMP officers “closes the loop” because it refers to providing the serial numbers and other identifying information for several of Meng’s electronic devices to “legat”, a reference to an FBI legal attaché office outside the US.
Past case law shows that US investigators could harvest a host of information from those identifiers, Fenton said.
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“In the evidence there are seamless links to a covert criminal investigation involving the misuse of the CBSA's powers,” he said.
Canadian government lawyers, acting on behalf of the United States, said the information was not shared with the FBI. They asked for more time to look into the matter but said they would share any information they discovered with Meng’s team.
The government lawyers have said Meng’s treatment was a normal immigration procedure and “not at all sinister”, calling the pursuit of more documents a “fishing expedition”.
But a number of new documents have been released by the Canadian side during the hearing. On Tuesday, these included an email in which a CBSA employee said that the transfer of Meng’s electronic passwords from border agents to police had been done by mistake.
Meng’s legal team is arguing that her three-hour detention by border agents before her arrest by the police allowed CBSA officers to confiscate her phones, computer and other devices and compel her to hand over her passwords.
If she had been arrested immediately, Fenton said, the police would have been required to tell her what she was being arrested for and allowed her to access legal counsel. The RCMP could have seized her devices, but could not have taken a statement or compelled her to give them her passwords.
“What happened here sidestepped that process,” Fenton said.
Justice Heather Holmes set a deadline of next Wednesday for Canadian government lawyers to complete five RCMP officers’ affidavits about whether they shared information with the FBI. Meng’s legal team will then have until October 16 to review the affidavits and determine whether they want to cross-examine the officers.
Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou say her search at Canadian border was bogus
Meng’s formal extradition hearing is scheduled to begin in January and last until October or November 2020.
Meng, 47, is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.