Canada bails Huawei executive over alleged breach of US Iranian sanctions

China has responded angrily – and stock markets confusedly –  to the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver airport. Meng, daughter of one of the telecom giant’s founders, was arrested on 1 December, although the news was not made public, apparently at her request, until some days later. She has now been granted CAD$10 million (USD $7.5m) bail, on the conditions that she does not flee, surrenders all passports and travel documents, must wear an ankle monitor and stays inside between 11pm and 6am.

At a hearing on 7 December before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, prosecutors are reported to have told the court that Meng had used a Huawei subsidiary called Skycom to evade sanctions on Iran between 2009 and 2014, and that Skycom had been publicly misrepresented as a separate company, whereas in fact ‘Skycom is Huawei’ and in doing so is guilty of fraud.

The arrest came against a backdrop of larger uncertainty in the trade relationship between the US and China, and, say lawyers, there will inevitably be speculation of a link between the ‘trade war’ and Wanzhou’s detainment. In an unforeseen twist, President Trump declared in an interview with Reuters news agency that he would ‘intervene’ if it would result in a better US trade deal with China:

‘If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,’ he said.

In an apparent rebuttal to the president’s deal-making approach, however, John C.  Demers, Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice told a Senate hearing, ‘What we do at the Justice Department is law enforcement. We don’t do trade.’

Meng Wanzhou’s affidavit can be found here:
https://www.scribd.com/document/395313564/Affidavit-of-Meng-Wanzhou#from_embed