Path remains murky for Meng Wanzhou's marathon extradition battle, after HSBC evidence triggers delays

South China Morning Post
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The path forward in Meng Wanzhou's extradition battle remained murky as lawyers continued to grapple with a three-month delay in the final phase of the Huawei Technologies Co. executive's marathon case in a Vancouver court.

Lawyers for Meng and the Canadian government met briefly to discuss how to revamp the schedule of the case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Wednesday, but the matter was adjourned until May 7, a court spokesman said.

The final stage of the case had been due to start this week, but instead the promise of new evidence from HSBC bank in Hong Kong triggered an eleventh-hour delay, with Meng granted an application to postpone until August 3 the final three weeks of arguments in the case, as she tries to avoid being sent to face trial in the US.

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The delay was approved by Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes last Wednesday to give Meng's lawyers time to go through the new evidence, which they believe will bolster her argument that US authorities misled the Canadian court about its fraud case against her.

Wednesday's hearing appeared to have gone unattended by reporters after it was moved from its regular courtroom, then omitted from the daily court lists. The hearing was over in less than 15 minutes, before reporters and at least one person who identified themselves as one of Meng's lawyers managed to dial in to listen on a phone line.

A spokesman for Huawei said the adjournment had been sought by Meng's lawyers, whose review of the HSBC material was already under way.

Meng, who is Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested at Vancouver's airport at the request of US authorities on December 1, 2018, and she has been resisting extradition to New York ever since.

She is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying about Huawei's business dealings in Iran, thus putting the bank at risk of breaching US sanctions on the Middle Eastern country. She denies the accusations.

The new evidence was secured after a lawsuit in Hong Kong's High Court resulted in an agreement this month between HSBC and Meng that the bank would turn over the documents.

The nature of the material was not known; some of it had already been handed over but the rest will be given to Meng in the next five weeks or so, according to her lawyers, who described the material as "copious".

The Canadian government lawyers representing US interests in the case opposed the delays, saying Meng was on a global fishing expedition for evidence which should be presented at her trial, not at an extradition hearing.

Any new arguments that result from the new HSBC evidence will have to be made before August 3, Holmes said last week.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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