Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou calls for extradition hearings to be postponed

A Huawei executive, who was arrested in Canada at the end of 2018, asked Monday to postpone the final stage of hearings in the United States for several months, according to new documents that are likely to acquit him, according to his lawyer.

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They request that the next hearings before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which was scheduled to begin on April 26 for a period of three weeks, not be resumed until August 3.

The defense of Ming Wanzhou, who was arrested in Vancouver at the request of the US justice, believes he needs more time to study the new documents that HSBC has agreed to send him.

These documents could show, according to these attorneys, that the United States has deliberately “deceived” Canada about the fraud allegations blamed on Huawei’s former CFO.

“We want to postpone the hearing for a limited time to study what we consider relevant documents,” said Richard Peck, one of Ms. Ming’s attorneys. “This postponement is necessary to ensure basic justice,” he said.

The Chinese telecom giant announced on April 12 that it had reached an agreement with HSBC Bank in Hong Kong to obtain new documents in the case, after it suffered a failure in a similar request in a London court last February.

The United States has accused the founder of Huawei’s daughter of lying to a HSBC executive during a 2013 meeting in Hong Kong about ties between the Chinese group and a subsidiary selling equipment to the United States. Iran, exposing the establishment of US sanctions.

The representative of the Canadian Attorney General rejected this new request, which will have to be decided by the judge leading the hearings.

“This is the latest attempt to convert this procedure into a criminal trial that should take place” in the United States, the prosecutor said in a document released on Monday at the hearing. “It is based on unconfirmed allegations (…) that were strongly challenged by the prosecution.”

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou in early December 2018 at Vancouver Airport, and a few days later in China with the arrest and recent trial of two Canadians on charges of espionage, led to a serious diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Ottawa.