Judge grills Meng Wanzhou’s lawyer over ‘fraud’ on day 2 of Huawei CFO’s Canada extradition hearing
- There were intense exchanges on the rule of ‘double criminality’ that must be established in any extradition case
- Meng’s lead lawyer Richard Peck has derided the fraud allegations against the Huawei executive as a ‘fiction’
The second day of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s high-stakes extradition hearing got under way in Vancouver on Tuesday, with her lawyer coming under intense questioning from the judge over his claim that Meng’s alleged conduct would not have constituted fraud in Canada, failing the extradition test of “double criminality”.
Meng’s lawyer Eric Gottardi started the day by responding to Justice Heather Holmes’ question, issued on Monday: if Meng’s alleged actions had occurred in Canada, would a domestic prosecution be viable?
That is crucial. This week’s hearings are devoted to “double criminality”, the rule that an extraditable person must be accused of something that would have constituted an offence in Canada, as well as the requesting state.
“We say the answer is no, because the bank would face no liability [for the alleged fraud],” Gottardi said.
Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer and a daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying about its relationship with an affiliate doing business in Iran, potentially leaving the bank exposed to the financial risk of prosecution for breaching US sanctions on Iran.
