The United States filed a “fatal defect” case against Meng Wanzhou A lawyer for a Huawei executive said on Friday that this is full of evidence gaps and does not meet the extradition threshold.
Eric Gottardi (Eric Gottardi) started the defense team’s response in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in response to the US request to extradite the Chinese telecom executive to a New York court to face fraud charges.
Meng was accused of misrepresenting Huawei’s relationship with technology equipment company Skycom in a 2013 statement to HSBC, putting the bank at risk of violating US sanctions on Iran.
But Gottadi told the judge that the United States, represented in court by lawyers for the Canadian Attorney General, failed to clearly explain how Meng’s actions constituted fraud.
Both Meng and Huawei deny the allegations.
“The so-called deception is ambiguous at best, and the so-called risk of the victim HSBC’s financial loss is completely illusory,” Gottadi told the judge.
“One of the reasons that makes this case so unusual is that it is difficult to accurately determine the risks claimed by the requesting State as the basis for fraud.”
Meng Wanzhou’s long-awaited extradition hearing began nearly three years after her arrest at Vancouver Airport in December 2018 deteriorated Canada-China relations.
The arrests of Canadians Michael Cumbert and Michael Spavor a few days after Meng Wanzhou’s arrest are widely regarded as retaliation, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to continue to fight for their release.
On Friday, Meng’s star lawyer team addressed government lawyers’ claims that Meng’s statement was an ingenious and deliberate effort to distance Huawei from Skycom and to assure the bank that it was protected from any risks related to sanctions.
Government lawyer Robert Frette argued that after a Reuters article stated that Skycom was attempting to sell HP equipment in Iran, Meng called the meeting and raised concerns about sanctions against the bank.
Frater told the court that HSBC has the right to obtain honest and frank information about its customers in order to make decisions about the financial services it provides, but Meng’s deception deprived this right. Therefore, he stated that HSBC has suffered the risk of being deprived-an essential element of fraud-including possible economic loss, reputation damage and penalties.
As the extradition case entered the final stage, Meng was accused of “commercial dishonesty”
Gottardi rejected this description and accused Frater of putting forward a “vague and changing theory” of the risks faced by the bank.
On the contrary, he said that Meng’s statement is completely factual, and there is no “flashing” evidence linking him to any decision made by HSBC that may expose him to civil or criminal liability risks.
Another Meng’s lawyer, Frank Addario, stated that the records of the US case in which Canada relied on Meng’s arrest contained “zero evidence,” indicating that Skycom or Huawei violated sanctions.
The defense’s court documents stated that Skycom made payments from its Chinese bank account to the HSBC UK bank account of the British company Networkers, and HSBC cleared these payments through a US subsidiary.
The lawyer argued that if HSBC violated the sanctions by clearing payments in the United States, it was the bank, not Meng.
“It’s not illegal to send irrelevant payments from the Bank of China to the Bank of the United Kingdom. Skycom does just that. HSBC chooses how to clear the payment,” Gottadi said.
He added that after eight years of the statement, the risk of HSBC being prosecuted or civil penalties has not become a reality.
The court heard that extradition cases are not trials, and the role of judges is limited to determining whether the requesting country has provided sufficient evidence to support the possible conviction of the case.
Government lawyers have repeatedly warned Deputy Chief Justice Heather Holmes that if she starts to weigh competitive inferences, she will be beyond the scope of her job duties, which falls within the jurisdiction of the trial.
But Gottadi also told Holmes that her job is not only to put a rubber stamp on the extradition request, she is also responsible for determining whether she has provided sufficient evidence to support the reasonable allegations against Meng.
“The adequacy of the evidence cannot be assessed abstractly.”
© 2021 Canadian Press
