Meng Wanzhou: Canadian officer denies ‘cover-up’ and tailoring testimony about Meng’s phone information allegedly going to FBI
- Janice Vander Graaf described a conversation and email from a colleague, as she testified she was satisfied the Huawei executive’s phone data was not sent
- But Meng’s lawyer challenged Vander Graaf about why she could not recall the same conversation and email in an affidavit sworn last year
A Canadian police officer has denied conducting a “cover up” and tailoring her evidence as she was challenged by Meng Wanzhou’s lawyer on Thursday about the handling of information from the Huawei executive’s electronic devices and whether it was sent to the American FBI.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Janice Vander Graaf, testifying at Meng’s extradition hearing in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver, described a verbal conversation with fellow officer Gurvinder Dhaliwal, who told her the information had been sent to the US authorities by Staff Sergeant Ben Chang.
The electronic serial number information came from devices seized from Meng by border officers at an immigration examination at Vancouver’s airport in the hours before her arrest on December 1, 2018.
But Vander Graaf testified that an email forwarded to her by Dhaliwal and written by Chang had subsequently satisfied her that the transfer had not taken place.
The verbal exchange is described in Vander Graaf’s notes, which Meng’s lawyers had seized upon to support their argument that Meng was the victim of a covert evidence-gathering exercise by the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), at the orchestration of the FBI, to aid Meng’s prosecution.