US acted ‘honourably’ in pursuit of Meng Wanzhou, Canadian government lawyer tells extradition hearing

Name: How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada
Uploaded: 2021-08-05T19:32:59.000Z
Duration: 4 min 43 s
Description: How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada

Huawei executive’s lawyers say the US tried to mislead the Supreme Court of British Columbia by omitting key evidence about its fraud case against her

The government’s lawyers say ‘the mere absence’ of evidence from a US summary of its case does not establish misconduct, and Meng should not be released

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, surrounded by guards, leaving the Supreme Court of British Columbia during a lunch break in her extradition case in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Ian Youngin Vancouver

Published: 3:32am, 6 Aug 2021Updated: 5:52am, 25 Dec 2021

US prosecutors pursuing Meng Wanzhou on fraud charges had acted “honourably”, and claims that they tried to mislead her extradition case in Vancouver were unsubstantiated, a Canadian government lawyer said on Thursday.

The final phase of the Huawei Technologies executive’s marathon extradition hearings began on Wednesday with her lawyers arguing that the process should be halted, releasing Meng, as the only remedy for the alleged US misconduct.

They contended that the Americans misled the Supreme Court of British Columbia with a faulty record of the case (ROC), a document that summarises why Meng was wanted for prosecution on fraud charges.

But government lawyer Monika Rahman told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes that “there is no evidence of anything other than what is presumed in extradition proceedings” – namely that the prosecution was being conducted in good faith.

In a written submission, Rahman and her colleagues representing US interests in the extradition case said that “[there] is no evidence that the Requesting State omitted evidence to mislead the Court, or that the ROCs were prepared in such a careless and cavalier manner as to be offensive to societal notions of fair play and decency.”

04:43

How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada

Meng is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying about Huawei’s business interests in Iran – which were conducted via an affiliate called Skycom – thus exposing the bank to the risk of breaching US sanctions on Tehran. The claim is centred on a PowerPoint presentation Meng gave to a HSBC banker in a Hong Kong teahouse in 2013.