Canadian Mountie ‘concluded FBI never got Meng Wanzhou’s phone information’, but her notes say otherwise
- Janice Vander Graaf says a colleague told her information from the Huawei executive’s devices was sent to the US, but an email led her to decide he was mistaken
- Meng’s lawyers at her extradition hearing say the handling of the evidence helps show she was the victim of a covert evidence-gathering exercise
A Canadian police officer whose notes suggest that information about Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou’s electronic devices was sent to US law enforcement agents testified on Wednesday that she later concluded the transfer never occurred.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Janice Vander Graaf said that she was initially concerned when first told about the supposed handover by her subordinate Constable Gurvinder Dhaliwal after Meng’s arrest on a US warrant at Vancouver’s airport almost two years ago – but that after reviewing an email from another officer she believed the “inconsistency” had been resolved.
“After reading the email, I realised that it didn’t say exactly what Constable Dhaliwal had told me,” Vander Graaf testified in Meng’s extradition case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Canadian government lawyers representing US interests have repeatedly denied that the information – including the electronic serial numbers of Meng’s devices – was ever sent to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Meng’s two phones, iPad, laptop and a memory stick were seized by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers in the hours before Meng was arrested by the RCMP at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018, outraging China and sending Beijing’s relations with Ottawa plummeting. The devices were then given to the RCMP.
