Meng Wanzhou to battle with Crown over mysterious bank documents
Lawyers for Huawei CFO have claimed HSBC documents could turn extradition case 'on its head'
Meng Wanzhou's defence team will battle lawyers for Canada's attorney general this week over a mysterious set of documents the Huawei executive hopes to rely on in her bid to avoid extradition to the United States.
The B.C. Supreme Court judge overseeing the high-profile proceeding is scheduled to hear arguments during the next two days related to information Meng's lawyers have previously said could turn the case "on its head" if they are allowed to introduce it during the final three weeks of arguments slated for the beginning of August.
The contents of the documents — which were obtained from HSBC through a Hong Kong court months ago — have been largely kept from public view to this point.
But in legal submissions, Meng's lawyers have suggested they may bolster her claims that the United States misled Canada about the strength of its case by omitting key facts that undercut the prosecution's allegations.
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes dismissed a defence application for a sweeping publication ban on the HSBC documents last week, meaning that their details may be disclosed in court Tuesday morning when the defence team begins to argue that they should be relied upon as evidence.
Accused of conspiracy and fraud
Meng is expected to appear in court in person this week for the first time in months.
The 49-year-old is Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of the Chinese telecommunications giant's founder, Ren Zhengfei.
The U.S. wants her extradited to New York to face charges of fraud and conspiracy in relation to allegations she lied to an HSBC executive in Hong Kong in 2013 about Huawei's control of a subsidiary accused of violating U.S. economic sanctions against Iran.
American prosecutors claim HSBC relied on Meng's alleged misrepresentations in deciding to continue a multi-billion dollar financial relationship with Huawei. As a result, they claim the bank risked loss and prosecution for breaching the same set of economic sanctions.
Meng was arrested at Vancouver's airport on Dec. 1, 2018, after arriving on a flight from Hong Kong, en route to Mexico City and a final destination of Argentina, where she was scheduled to attend a conference.
She has been living under a form of house arrest ever since, assembling a crack Canadian legal team to fight being sent to the United States during a drawn-out series of hearings that have dissected every element of the extradition process.
Meng's lawyers have previously argued that the case was subject to political interference by former U.S. president Donald Trump and that she was being used as a pawn in a trade war between the United States and China.
They have claimed that the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency officers breached her constitutional rights at the time of her arrest by questioning her without a lawyer and running a covert criminal investigation at the behest of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And they have alleged that the charges themselves were brought in violation of international law, which puts the actions of a Chinese executive at a meeting in Hong Kong outside of U.S. criminal jurisdiction.
A last 'branch' of abuse
The proceedings are expected to wrap in August with defence arguments about a last so-called "branch" of abuse of process involving the allegations of misrepresentation grounded in the HSBC documents.
The Crown will then have the chance to argue the crux of its case for extradition — which is that the United States has provided facts that, taken at face value, would reach the low bar needed to move ahead with prosecution.
The Hong Kong court agreed to the release of the HSBC documents in April after the defence lost a bid to get them through a judge in the United Kingdom.
Much of the same information has been released to Meng's lawyers in the United States, but the court there forbade them from sharing it with Meng's Canadian counsel.
Judging from veiled correspondence filed in the U.S. courts, the documents appear to concern HSBC's business with Huawei and its knowledge of the company's involvement with SkyCom, the subsidiary accused of sanctions violations.
Meng's lawyers have claimed that the bank did not rely on Meng's assurances to continue working with Huawei and that senior executives knew about the relationship between SkyCom and Huawei.
Exculpatory information?
HSBC was under a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. government at the time of the alleged wrongdoing, which placed the bank under additional pressure to abide by the rules.
A letter filed in the U.S. criminal proceeding earlier this month claims that prosecutors have exculpatory information provided by outside counsel "enlisted by the bank to conduct an internal investigation into the relationship between HSBC and Huawei."
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For its part, the Crown is expected to argue that the HSBC documents should not be part of the Canadian court record, because they contain the kind of information that should be considered at trial, not during an extradition hearing in which the record of the case provided by a requesting state is held to be presumptively reliable.
Meng's case has fractured relations between Canada and China.
Two Canadians arrested in China in the weeks after Meng's detention remain behind bars, their fate uncertain.
China has accused former diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor of spying in what is widely believed to be retaliation for Meng's arrest.
The two men were tried behind closed doors in recent months, but no verdicts have been announced.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden recently discussed Kovrig and Spavor's ongoing detention during G7 summit meetings. Biden has publicly called for the release of the two Canadians.
Meng has denied the allegations against her, which have not been proven in court.
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