Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng Admits to Misleading Global Financial Institution
justice.gov
justice.gov
Hong Kong could have thrown a skunk into the extradition garden party by asserting sovereign criminal jurisdiction and requesting Meng's extradition along with investigatory files from DOJ via MLAT.
The extradition hearing was proceeding under the fiction that the "criminal" act took place in Canada; however Meng's lawyers pointed out that Canadian law has no jurisdiction over conduct between foreign nationals in another country (excepting war crimes and crimes against humanity). The judge found difficulties with the DOJ case.
Had the judge ruled against the DOJ, Meng could have flown back to China with the DOJ indictment hanging over her head and inhibiting foreign travel.
The DPA spares her that along with maybe another decade of an ankle bracelet, security guards, and several million in legal fees.
But really the DOJ had to twist a repealed Iran sanctions case that would not fly in Canada into a "bank fraud" case.
Why a Canadian justice minister refused to see through that and halt extradition in January '19 and spare two innocent Canadians nearly three years in Chinese jail, I have no idea.
I'm no fan of China, but they do know their way around Realpolitik hardball way, way, way better than Canada,which as a Canadian I find utterly clueless.
Unless your argument is to start imposing US law on foreign citizens operating on foreign lands, I think you understand exactly why this is problematic.
Huawei and Iran should have been doing business in a different currency, and frankly I don't understand why they weren't.
The loophole is that financial entities that can deal in the US financial system are supposed to do that through a US subsidiary, allowing jurisdiction through that.
The issue there though is that Meng Wenzhou did not actually do anything illegal with the HSBC subsidiary. The US claims she did, but there is no evidence to the US claim and evidence to the contrary.
At this point the US could go after Huawei for dealing with Iran, but Huawei is already maximally sanctioned.
The US could go after HSBC but they don't operate in the US anymore either and it would probably lose or they would get away with it as they always do. Plus the UK would be very mad.
The loophole was to request extradition of Meng Wenzhou over a crime that everyone knows never happened. But if the crime actually happened is not what's at question in the extradition process, that's decided in US courts.
And once Meng Wenzhou is actually in the US, the US can do anything they want to her, no foreign court binds then anymore. She can also be used as a bargaining chip during the extradition process or after extradition.
It's broadly the same procedure as with Assange. Stick him with a crime that didn't actually happen, extradite him, then do whatever you want once he's on US soil.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8220178/meng-wanzhou-huawei-china...
> Pre-trial detention in China is used as a weapon of duress which, in its aggregate, adds up to torture. The accused are held in harsh conditions in a “detention center” designed to break resistance and crush the human spirit in order to extort a confession. As a result, such self-incriminating confessions, when they happen, are false. The following description of those detention conditions comes from my own experiences during 23 months in captivity, in addition to listening to and reading about other prisoners’ experiences, including conversations with prisoners released in 2019.
Full description: https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/the-cruel-fate-of-michael-ko...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three
Being foreign puts a pretty big taeget on your back in the eyes of US law enforcement agencies.
"The warrant was based on allegations that Wanzhou had cleared money that was claimed to be for Huawei, but was actually for Skycom,[34] an entity claimed to be entirely controlled by Huawei, which was said to be dealing with Iran, contrary to sanctions. According to the defence lawyer, the bank involved in the dealings was HSBC. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou#Career
brand new from Noam Chomsky https://www.economist.com./by-invitation/2021/09/24/noam-cho...
> In December 2012 and January 2013, various news organizations, including Reuters, reported that Skycom offered to sell “embargoed” equipment from a U.S. computer equipment manufacturer in Iran in potential violation of U.S. export controls law, and that Huawei had close ties with Skycom
And the outcome was pretty muted with a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (i.e. a nothing happens agreement):
> Under the terms of the DPA, Meng has agreed to the accuracy of a four-page statement of facts that details the knowingly false statements she made to Financial Institution 1. Meng also has agreed not to commit other federal, state or local crimes. If Meng breaches the agreement, she will be subject to prosecution of all the charges against her in the third superseding indictment filed in this case
edit: to make it more obvious, it wasn't just close ties, Huawei wholly owned Skycom via a subsidary and then tried to hide that ownership by "selling" it's shares to another company (which also was a Huawei subsidary)
>Her lawyers argued that internal HSBC emails and memos showed she had been upfront with senior HSBC staff about Huawei’s relationship with the subsidiary accused of sanctions-busting, Skycom. Indeed, at a hearing in August, the judge in the case said that the case against Meng seemed very unusual. No one lost money, the allegations were several years old, and the intended victim, a global bank, knew the truth even as it was allegedly being lied to. Heather Holmes, associate chief justice, asked: “Isn’t it unusual that one will see a fraud case with no actual harm many years later? And one in which the alleged victim, a large institution, appears to have had numerous people within the institution who had all the facts that are now said to be misrepresented?”
I don't really care about the rest. Selling US computers to Iran is not illegal where Skycom was operating. It's a travesty that the US gets to prevent people from selling things to Iran even if they are operating outside of the US.
Even if Skycom was wholly owned by Huawei, the US should not get to impose their power on actions that happen solely outside of US territory.
But beyond that, the entire case is clearly a political ploy by the Trump and the US administration following to extract concessions from China. Using extraterritorial "offences" to prosecute someone for purely political reasons stretches the credibility of the US legal system past it's breaking point, and morality is not even a question anymore.
To be blunt, nothing of what you said even contradicts who you reply to. It amounts to taking the US government at their full word not only in facts but in spirit too.
No its not while Iran has a nuclear weapons program and is sanctioned for it.
> Even if Skycom was wholly owned by Huawei, the US should not get to impose their power on actions that happen solely outside of US territory.
US imposed sanctions, company owned by huawei broke them, what should happen here?
> Using extraterritorial "offences" to prosecute someone for purely political reasons
They broke embargo and tried to hide it, what do you expect... To just let them continue to aid Iran?
Only the US government still believes this. Which happens to have interests strongly opposing Iran's.
>US imposed sanctions, company owned by huawei broke them, what should happen here?
You can get a judgement against the company or even Huawei if you figure out a legal strategy. Why would you go after an employee on false pretenses? Come on, we both know what's happening there.
> They broke embargo and tried to hide it, what do you expect... To just let them continue to aid Iran?
Is your argument really that people in Iran shouldn't be allowed to have computers, and that it's fine to lie and imprison people for things they did well outside of your jurisdiction over false pretenses for it?
Because right now your argument is basically that the US should be allowed to make law that is valid worldwide and to imprison anyone in the world for it.
Besides, you totally ignored the entire issue with Trump indicating that he would be willing to release her in exchange for concessions. Keep in mind he's the guy under who she was arrested.
Umm... since 2005, EU, UN, and U.S. sanctions have targeted Iran for violating treaties under which it promised not to pursue nuclear weapons.
The centrifuges destroyed by Stuxnet were not for nuclear weapons?, how about all the assassinated nuclear scientists?, they're working on peaceful nuclear?
> You can get a judgement against the company or even Huawei if you figure out a legal strategy. Why would you go after an employee on false pretenses? Come on, we both know what's happening there.
Legal strategy is she is wanted for trial in the United States, she is fighting extradition instead of going to face trial. It is a valid strategy.
> Is your argument really that people in Iran shouldn't be allowed to have computers
They are under embargo for nuclear weapons program. I really don't want them to have nuclear weapons either. If this means the iranian people don't have computers they only have their leaders and themselves to blame. Changing them would solve the issue.
> Besides, you totally ignored the entire issue with Trump indicating that he would be willing to release her in exchange for concessions. Keep in mind he's the guy under who she was arrested.
Trump said a lot of worse things if you take them at face value, he's not in office anymore, she on the other hand is still wanted for extradition.
The lesson here is don't break another country's laws and then expect to visit it or its allies without answering to a court of law.
Trump is the one that started the extradition. Biden is the one that ended it.
Stop pushing misinformation.
And by the way, every single US ally she visited except for Canada refused to extradite her because this is very obviously outside of US sovereignty.
The only reason the extradition wasn't refused (yet) in Canada is because, unlike in other countries, there is no mechanism for the executive branch to throw it out. So it has to go through the entire process as long as the US makes a request. In this case if you read between the lines above, you can see that the judges were very skeptical of the US claims, whether we would have accepted to extradite her to begin with is far from being up in the air.
The US exploited our unique legal system in Canada to force us to arrest her under false pretences.
Beyond that, US law simply doesn't apply outside of the US. Sovereignty is an exclusive war, the US deciding to impose it's law on foreign countries by force is only tolerated because the US is too powerful and it uses it scarely and officiously - a formal declaration by the US to that extent would not be tolerated by any country in the world - wars have been fought over much less.
Sent from my Huawei phone.
Chinese patriots think their government is the best. American patriots know that their government is the worst.
The American patriots are clearly less delusional.
Corporate senior leadership, especially in Big Tech, are moving along the continuum towards sovereign diplomatic immunity.
Yesterday, power was energy/natural resource/auto manufacturing.
Today, power is telecom/networking/search/social media.
Tomorrow, power might be AI/quantum/longevity/space.
Huawei is the fulcrum upon which much of China’s digital layer global ambitions are being built.