Meng Wanzhou’s extradition lawyers call US fraud case implausible, unprecedented, fatally flawed, in final push for release
- The US case that the Huawei executive defrauded HSBC involved no deception, loss or risk, her lawyers said in their last arguments in her extradition fight
- Nothing Meng said in a PowerPoint presentation on Huawei’s Iran business was untrue nor did it put the bank in peril from US sanctions, said Eric Gottardi
Lawyers for the Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou called the US fraud case against her implausible, unprecedented and fatally flawed, as they argued in the final stage of her extradition hearing on Friday that she must be released.
The US accusation – that Meng defrauded HSBC by lying about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran and thus put the bank at risk of breaching American sanctions on Tehran – “displays legal and factual defects rarely seen in fraud prosecutions, at least at the committal stage”, her lawyers told the Supreme Court of British Columbia in a submission.
Meng lawyer Eric Gottardi told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes that the US case was based on “vague and shifting theories of risk and causation”.
Most fraud cases involve a victim being cheated out of their money, Gottardi said, but in Meng’s case, “the theory of economic loss by HSBC is wholly illusory [and] fatally flawed”.
The extradition battle, which began when Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2018, is reaching a climax as the diplomatic furore surrounding the case escalates. China was infuriated by Meng’s arrest, and her treatment has sent Beijing’s relations with Ottawa and Washington into crisis.
“No deception. No loss. Not even a plausible theory of risk. And no causal connection between the impugned representations and the deprivation said to have befallen the putative victim,” Meng’s lawyers said in a written submission to the committal hearing, which is the last courtroom process before Holmes decides whether to release Meng or recommend to Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti that she be extradited.