Meanwhile, later today in Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, her main extradition case starts in earnest, more than two years after her arrest.
The US government is alleging that Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, wrongly told HSBC that Huawei was independent of a Hong Kong company, Skycom, that was used to transfer embargoed goods to Iran. It wants Canada to extradite her so the US can bring charges of fraud against her in the US court.
Meng’s legal team asked a London court in February to force HSBC, which is registered in England, to reveal details of its transactions, citing an 1879 law, which it believes will show the bank knew of the Skycom relationship. The judge, Michael Fordham QC, refused the application.
Now, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), based in Hong Kong, Meng has applied to the High Court of the Chinese special administrative region to force HSBC to provide access to documents relating to the case. The case will be heard in private on 12 March, says the SCMP.
Her main case, in the British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada, starts later today. According to a weekend report in the Washington Post, her legal team will argue that former US president Donald Trump so so “poisoned” the hearings that they can “no longer be reasonably regarded as fair” and should be halted.
Meng denies all charges. Sources close to Huawei’s legal team told Capacity in January that they expect the case to go on until May or June, with appeals — whatever the result — to run through the rest of 2021 or beyond.
