HongKong

Lawyer: Canada border questions violated Huawei CFO's rights


Lawyers for a senior executive for Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies argued at an extradition hearing Friday that her detention and questioning at the Vancouver airport violated her rights, saying agents had no reason to question her about the company’s activity in Iran except to assist U.S. investigators.

Meng Wanzhou Huawei’s chief financial officer who is also the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested at the airport in late 2018 at the request of U.S., which wants her extradited to face fraud charges. The arrest infuriated Beijing, which sees her case as a political move designed to prevent China’s rise.

The U.S. accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. It says Meng committed fraud by misleading the HSBC bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran. Much of the case centers around an August 2013 PowerPoint presentation made to an HSBC executive during a lunch in Hong Kong.

Meng’s lawyers claim her extraction should be halted because of an abuse of process, saying Canada Border Services Agency officers detained and questioned her without a lawyer, seized her electronic devices and put them in special bags to prevent wiping, and compelled her to give up the passcodes before her official arrest.

Defense lawyer Mona Duckett said Meng’s treatment at the airport “was not a routine border screening process.”



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