Author: Kate Conger / Source: New York Times
Journalists outside the courthouse in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, appeared for a bail hearing on Friday. David Ryder/Reuters
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The reasons that the United States asked the Canadian authorities to arrest a top executive of the Chinese technology company Huawei last week had been shrouded in mystery.
On Friday, the details of the arrest and what led up to it came out in a Canadian courtroom.
At a bail hearing in Vancouver for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and a daughter of the company’s founder, Canadian prosecutors said she was accused of fraud. The heart of the charges related to how Ms. Meng may have participated in a scheme to trick financial institutions into making transactions that violated United States sanctions against Iran, they said.
Ms. Meng had “direct involvement” with Huawei’s representations to banks, said John Gibb-Carsley, an attorney with Canada’s Justice Department.
The hearing shed light on an incident that has rattled the relationship between the United States and China as they prepare to enter negotiations to cease a brutal trade war. While changing planes in Vancouver on Dec. 1, Ms. Meng was arrested at the behest of the United States, which has for years looked into potential ties between Huawei and the Chinese government or Communist Party.
Because of Ms. Meng’s stature in China as a top executive and part of its elite, news of her arrest has rippled through the country.
A Huawei spokesman said late Friday, “We have every confidence that the Canadian and U.
S. legal systems will reach the right conclusion.”With Ms. Meng, 46, seated inside a glass box at British Columbia’s Supreme Court, Mr. Gibb-Carsley laid out what had led to her arrest. He said that between 2009 and 2014, Huawei used a Hong Kong company, Skycom Tech, to make transactions in Iran and do business with telecom companies there, in violation of American sanctions. Banks in the United States cleared financial transactions for Huawei, inadvertently doing business with Skycom, he said.
The banks were “victim institutions” of fraud by Ms. Meng, Mr. Gibb-Carsley said.
In 2013, articles by Reuters alleged that Huawei used Skycom to do business in Iran, and had tried to import American-made computer equipment into the country in violation of sanctions. Several financial institutions asked Huawei if the allegations were true, Mr. Gibb-Carsley said.
At the time, Ms. Meng arranged a meeting with an executive from one of the financial institutions, he said. During the meeting, she spoke through an English interpreter and presented PowerPoint slides in Chinese, saying that Huawei operated in Iran in strict compliance with United States sanctions. Ms. Meng explained that Huawei’s engagement with Skycom was part of normal business operations and that Huawei had sold the shares it once held in Skycom.
But there was no…
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