US charges against Meng Wanzhou turn fraud law ‘on its head’, her lawyer says in final week of extradition hearings
- There was no causal link between the Huawei executive’s conduct and any negative impact on her alleged victim, HSBC, said lawyer Mark Sandler
- The ‘unprecedented’ theory that Meng put the bank at risk of breaking US sanctions on Iran was ‘factually and legally untenable’, her lawyers wrote
The US case against Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou “turned fraud law on its head”, failing to show that she lied to HSBC, thought the bank was being put at financial risk by her statements, or had caused any actual deprivation, her lawyer argued on Monday as the final week of hearings in her extradition fight began in a Canadian court.
US prosecutors want Meng to face trial in New York for allegedly defrauding HSBC by lying in a 2013 PowerPoint presentation she made about Huawei’s business in Iran, conducted via an affiliate called Skycom.
This allegedly induced HSBC to route Iran-related payments from Skycom to a British firm called Networkers through the bank’s US subsidiary, thus putting the bank at risk of breaching American sanctions on Tehran.
But Mark Sandler, a lawyer for Meng, told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that it was “crystal clear” from Meng’s presentation that Huawei and Skycom were working together in Iran, and HSBC still chose to route the Networkers payments this way.
“Nothing Ms Meng said induced HSBC to violate US sanctions laws,” Sandler contended to the committal hearing, and even if the bank was at risk, this was “its own doing”.