A judge in Canada has ruled that the U.S. extradition case against senior Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou can continue since the allegations against Meng constitutes a crime in Canada.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei and chief financial officer of the company, was arrested in December 2018 at Vancouver International Airport. She was indicted in January 2019 amid allegations that a Huawei-affiliated company, Skycom Tech, sold telecommunications equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Meng was also accused of fraud for misrepresenting Huawei’s business in Iran to the U.S. government and multiple financial institutions.
“Ms. Meng’s approach to the double criminality analysis would seriously limit Canada’s ability to fulfill its international obligations in the extradition context for fraud and other economic crimes,” Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, wrote in her decision.
Judge Holmes said Canada did not have sanctions against Iran, but the economic sanctions imposed by the United States “were not fundamentally contrary to Canadian values.”
The U.S. is seeking Meng’s extradition for prosecution in the Eastern District of New York.
“Huawei is disappointed in the ruling,” the company said in a statement. “We expect Canada’s judicial system will ultimately prove Ms. Meng’s innocence.”
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, in a statement, said the United States and Canada were abusing their bilateral extradition treaty and violating the rights of one of its citizens.
“The purpose of the United States is to bring down Huawei and other Chinese high-tech companies, and Canada has been acting in the process as an accomplice of the United States,” a spokesperson for the embassy said. “The whole case is entirely a grave political incident.”
Governments in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia have sought to limit the use of equipment made by Huawei in their telecoms infrastructure, arguing the company’s ties to the Chinese government posed security risks.