Major blow to Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou as Canadian extradition judge rejects HSBC documents as evidence

The Huawei executive’s lawyers had said the documents provided by HSBC showed that she could not have defrauded the bank

But Canadian government lawyers said the documents were irrelevant to an extradition hearing and were a matter for her trial in the US

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Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou leaves a court hearing during a lunch break in Vancouver, British Columbia on June 29. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:07am, 10 Jul 2021Updated: 5:52am, 25 Dec 2021

Huawei Technologies Co. executive Meng Wanzhou has suffered a major blow in her battle against extradition to face fraud charges in the United States, after a Canadian judge ruled on Friday that a trove of documents provided by HSBC bank could not be admitted as evidence.

Meng’s lawyers had argued that the hundreds of pages of emails and other documents, which HSBC gave Meng under a legal settlement reached in Hong Kong in April, showed that US authorities had made selective, misleading and “outright false” claims about their case against her.

But Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that the evidence could play no part in the marathon extradition battle that Meng has been waging since her arrest at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018.

Huawei Canada said in a press release that it respected the ruling “but we regret this outcome”.

Meng Wanzhou leaves her home to attend a court hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia on April 19. Photo: Bloomberg

Written reasons for Holmes’ ruling, which she announced at a case management conference on Friday, were not immediately released. In brief remarks, Holmes said they would be issued in about 10 days.

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