Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou claimed Monday that U.S. authorities are trying to mislead the B.C. judge overseeing the Huawei executive’s extradition hearing by providing an outline of the case against her that is riddled with holes and distortions.
Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou claim U.S. authorities are trying to mislead the B.C. judge overseeing the Huawei executive’s extradition hearing by providing an outline of the case against her that is riddled with holes and distortions.
Meng’s defence team says the allegations of “deliberate and/or reckless misstatements of fact and material omissions” in the official record of the case are so serious that the extradition proceedings should be tossed for an alleged violation of the 48-year-old’s charter rights.
The new allegations were raised at a B.C. Supreme Court hearing held Monday to chart the course of the high-profile case over the coming year.
In a 10-page case management memo, Meng’s lawyers claim the records — filed to justify the U.S. request to extradite the Huawei chief financial officer on charges of fraud — are “so replete with intentional or reckless error” that the only way to deal with them is a stay of proceedings.
Accused of fraud
Meng is accused of lying to an HSBC executive in Hong Kong in August 2013 about Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, a company prosecutors claim was violating U.S. economic sanctions against Iran.
The U.S. claims Skycom was actually a subsidiary of Huawei and that HSBC and other banks placed themselves at risk of prosecution and financial loss by continuing to provide financing to Huawei based on Meng’s reassurances.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s billionaire founder, has denied the allegations.
She was arrested at Vancouver’s international airport on Dec. 1, 2018, on an extradition warrant after arriving from Hong Kong on her way to Argentina.
Meng was released on $10 million bail and has been living for the past year and a half under a form of house arrest in one of two multi-million homes she owns on Vancouver’s west side.
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes dealt the defence a significant blow last month by ruling that the proceedings should continue as the case met the ba