Surprise, surprise, Vancouver: Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou is a mansion-owning, satellite-parenting reverse immigrant

Title documents on two Vancouver homes, worth US$16.4 million, identify Meng Wanzhou’s husband as Liu Xiaozong

Meng’s current circumstances are remarkable, but her Canadian backstory is familiar – she is a reverse immigrant who left family members in Vancouver for years

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Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou and her two Vancouver homes, which are in the name of husband Liu Xiaozong. The homes in the expensive neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy (top right) and Dunbar (bottom right) are worth C$16.3 million and C$5.6 million respectively. Photos: Ian Young and Huawei handout

Published: 5:00am, 10 Dec 2018Updated: 5:55am, 25 Dec 2021

With the arrest of Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States, Vancouver has found itself at the epicentre of a ground-shaking, magnitude-nine, monster of a story.

A distillation of two superpowers’ current and future battle for primacy on the world’s economic stage, the case has roiled financial markets and provoked fury from Beijing, as the US-China trade war hangs in the balance. It is a tale of epic sweep.

In this courtroom sketch, Meng Wanzhou, right, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, sits beside a translator during a bail hearing at British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, on Friday. Graphic: Jane Wolsak / The Canadian Press via AP

And yet on another, granular, level, Vancouverites could be forgiven for thinking Meng’s backstory sounds, well, pretty ho-hum: that of a wealthy returnee immigrant and satellite parent, who abandoned Canadian permanent residency for more-lucrative opportunities back in China, while buying a couple of Westside Vancouver mansions for her family.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver’s airport as she changed planes in December 1, and is being detained in prison pending the outcome of a bail hearing and possible extradition to the United States to face fraud charges.

According to Meng’s lawyer, David J. Martin, his client and her husband – identified in the bail hearing on Friday only as “Mr Liu” – are the owners of two multimillion-dollar properties, in the tony neighbourhoods of Dunbar and Shaughnessy.

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