Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou defrauded HSBC into loaning billions with ‘misrepresentations’ about Iran, Canada says, telling court to reject her bid for release
- HSBC only continued to do business with Huawei because of Meng’s claims that the firm had cut ties with Skycom, a company operating in Iran, lawyers say
- The government lawyers say the fraud charge satisfies a requirement of ‘double criminality’ for her to be extradited to the US
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s request for the dismissal of the US extradition case against her must be rejected because her alleged offence was not breaking US sanctions on Iran, but defrauding HSBC, Canada’s attorney general said on Friday.
Meng’s lawyers had argued that she should be discharged because the US case was based on alleged breaches of American sanctions on Iran, which are not crimes in Canada. This failed the extradition requirement of “double criminality” under which an extraditable offence must represent a crime in Canada, as well as the requesting state, they claimed.
But in a submission released on Friday, the Canadian government lawyers representing US interests in the extradition case said “the essence of the Applicant’s offending conduct is fraud, not violating sanctions”.
The bank had taken part in billions of dollars of loans to Huawei because Meng allegedly had deceived the bank about its activities in Iran, they said.
“[Meng’s] misrepresentations put HSBC’s economic interests at risk by preventing the bank from accurately assessing the risks of maintaining a business relationship with Huawei,” said the attorney general’s lawyers, referring to a 2013 meeting in Hong Kong at which Meng told HSBC that Huawei had cut ties with Skycom, a company operating in Iran.