I knew we’d end up in court, says border officer who dealt with Meng Wanzhou, as judge grants Huawei executive a small win
- A judge ruled Huawei’s chief financial officer can introduce new evidence from her PowerPoint presentation to HSBC, in her fight against extradition to the US
- The decision came as a Vancouver court continued to hear witness testimony about how Meng was handled at Vancouver’s airport in 2018
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of the Supreme Court of British Columbia agreed to admit new evidence presented by Meng, including portions of a crucial PowerPoint presentation she made to an HSBC executive, although other evidence was excluded.
In her written ruling, the judge also threw out an application by the Canadian attorney general to dismiss one of Meng’s arguments, that the record of the case (ROC) provided by the US is misleading and this constituted an abuse of process. The attorney general’s lawyers, representing US interests in the case, had opposed the new evidence, which was tendered to support the abuse-of-process argument.
The argument claims “the requesting state deliberately misstated or omitted material evidence in the record of the case”.
Meng, daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, is accused by the US of defrauding HSBC by lying about the technology giant’s business dealings in Iran during the presentation, putting the bank at risk of violating US sanctions. She denies this.
The admission into evidence of some parts of Meng’s PowerPoint is important because her lawyers say the ROC gives an incomplete account of what she told HSBC in the presentation.
