Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou admits lying about Iran deal, gets to go home Huawei finance chief Meng Wanzhou has reached a deal with the US Justice Department to drop the fraud and conspiracy charges against her in exchange for admitting that she made false statements about her company's business dealings with Iran. The deferred prosecution agreement will end Uncle Sam's attempt to extradite Meng to …
Would that be the criminal behavior of a Chinese based company based out of Hong Kong using a subsidiary to trade with Iran in contravention of US law? I find it a bit of a stretch to argue that it's criminal. Irritating for the US regime admittedly in that the normal bullying tactics didn't have the desired effect, but hardly criminal in anything other that a Team America sort of way.
"Would that be the criminal behavior of a Chinese based company based out of Hong Kong using a subsidiary to trade with Iran in contravention of US law? I find it a bit of a stretch to argue that it's criminal."
Well yeah you're 100% absolutely correct, so long as Huawei doesn't have an arm in USA reselling forbidden American technology to Iran. Except that's exactly what they have, so I guess you are therefore wrong.
"...I expect there to be lawsuits against the US government for their grandstanding..."
What "grandstanding"? I think you just completely glossed over the crimes Huawei has been committing.
You know what, all of a sudden I've become fully in support of AUKUS and nuclear-powered subs for Australia.
Furthermore I think I'm going to buy more Taiwan and less China from now on...
Um no, China has just pointed out that when one side takes a hostage, the other side is likely to do the same. What is really disgusting about this case is not only that the Americans have used their perverted plea-bargain method of winning a prosecution without presenting evidence across an international border, but also that they have done so in a politically motivated persecution.
Anyway, bon voyage to Meng Wanzhou. I hope she doesn't blame the Canadians; it really wasn't their fault.
"and she has agreed not to commit further crimes."
Love this. Put a proven liar back in a country of oppression, lies, double talk and smoke and she promises not to do anything else shady...
China (and all other regimes that suppress human rights) should be isolated, blockaded and shunned internationally until they adopt proper laws with incorruptible courts.
Likewise, it's a huge climb-down for the US. After 3 years of trying, they've not managed to convince Canada of the evidence to justify deporting her to the USA. And now, instead of presenting the relevant evidence to one of their closets allies, they've basically said to her, "look, if you pretend you did it, we'll drop the extradition, you can go home and we'll no longer pursue the charges."
No matter how they try to present it, this is hugely embarrassing for the US.
China (and all other regimes that suppress human rights) should be isolated, blockaded and shunned internationally until they adopt proper laws with incorruptible courts.
The vast American corporation I work for gets nearly $1 billion in profits every year out of China. I'm pretty sure the shareholders don't give a bugger about human rights.
They nabbed her. Of course, they have culpability, otherwise, they have no agency.
Whether is was right to detain her is another matter. It all depends on whether the laws she purportedly violated are just laws, whether detention was a just response to claimed violation, whether detention is proportionate to the harm of not detaining her, etc.
IlNo that it's clear that this 'valid' request was in fact a politically motivated witch hunt, it should be time to reconsider their treaty with the US.
US politics have harmed Canadian interests for very little political gain by them.
With friends like that you don't need enemies.
She was facing criminal charges in a democratic country with which Canada had an extradition treaty.
So of course she would be arrested and extradition proceedings would be initiated.Canada is not culpable because it did not do anything wrong; it would have done something wrong if it had not arrested her.
No one is above the law.
Until now, apparently.
I certainly hope that someday Xi Jinping will stand trial in the Dominion of Hong Kong, a self-governing Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations like Australia or Canada. Or in Tibet, or Uighuristan.
"I certainly hope that someday Xi Jinping will stand trial in the Dominion of Hong Kong, a self-governing Dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations"
Unless you are predicting that the UK is going to take back Hong Kong some time in the future, I think you need to look at the international headlines from back in 1999.
Arresting someone based on strong evidence and a legitimate extradition request, offering them due process, and letting them stay in a multi-million dollar mansion in the lap of luxury (continuing to run their business no less) is a far cry from taking randoms off the street based only on nationality and torturing them in a dungeon with no access to representation or consular services to make a point. Equating the two is sheer insanity.
I trust that the next time Canada and China have a trade issue you will fully support Canada rounding up Chinese visa students and locking them in the most medieval dungeon we can find? Just fair and normal, right?
The Canadian Michaels were not "randoms". There weren't tourists or ordinary business visitors to China. Look them up - they were clearly in positions that put them on the watch list. I'm not defending Chinese justice, but these were people whose work made them far from random victims.
With respect, cite your sources here.
Because I HAVE looked them up and I'm not seeing what you're seeing.
Their detention was clearly a reprisal for Meng's detention. Their release (after being found GUILTY of espionage) hours after Meng's release is clearly a response to Meng's release.
I cannot fathom how anyone from the West doing business in China cannot look at that and think, "That could have been me." China has shown it is willing to imprison people on trumped up charges, give them no legitimate legal process, and restrict their Consular access in retaliation if one of their foreign nationals is detained.
Speaking personally I will NEVER go to China as a result of this. My work could offer me every incentive under the sun, but it's not worth the risk to place myself under the power of such a corrupt regime in the pursuit of cheap Chinese labour and their manufacturing capability. We can look elsewhere.
Anytime you comply with an authority, you are in that moment rewarding an act of siege by an external aggressor .. you teach them to normalize their arrogance and you teach yourself that you are too pathetic to e hist and are luck thus other entity is granting you exception
Authority is created by the complacency of the follower and personal accountability to causality is owed.
Authority cannot exhhist without the willingness of others to give up in themselves.
I do not think the deal with MWZ was mainly aimed to release the 2 Canadians rather than showing ( once again, as if we needed it) that the lefties (or commies, if there is a difference for you) are liars. MWZ admitted she was lying and guess what, the CCP was lying too about the 2 hostages. They could have at least waited a month or so before releasing them.
Getting the 2 Michael back will definitely gives the CCP less leverage on the west, in this regard getting them back is good because public opinion, unfortunately, matters.
2 birds with 1 shot is generally a good thing, as for MWZ going to jail... who cares?
So you would not admit to anything when someone locks you up for months on spurious charges that wouldn't even bother your average Wall Street banker then?
The US has waged a trade war with Huawei for years because they were so far ahead with 5G that US companies didn't even get a look at the market, so they had to be smeared and screwed over in any way possible and with Trump in play they naturally defaulted to dirty.
It had results, too: despite Huawei passing audit after audit that verified there wasn't a single byte of intercept in their code, whole countries are now buying other products, thanks fully still not US (Eriksson, for instance, is making good money now). And no, there hasn't been a single US products so far that has offered itself to a similar level of scrutiny, so you best ensure you use decent crypto for all your communication - because you know who you can not trust *cough* Crypto AG *cough*.
I'm not sure which spurious charges you mean, MWZ allegedly covering up alleged breaches of extraterritorial sanctions that have no standing in international law, or the two Michaels allegedly collecting and revealing state secrets. Seems to me we have seen rather weak evidence in both cases.
"I do not think the deal with MWZ was mainly aimed to release the 2 Canadians rather than showing ( once again, as if we needed it) that the lefties (or commies, if there is a difference for you) are liars."
Why would the US care about a couple of foreigners? Why have the US not presented enough suitable evidence to Canada to allow the extradition to the US to occur? While defending China in any way, how is what the US did not lying? They claimed to have evidence but seem not to actually have any.
Why have the US not presented enough suitable evidence to Canada to allow the extradition to the US to occur?
They did. Lots of it. Some of which was problematic, but all of which was under review by the judge.
Meng's lawyers also came up with numerous non-evidence based arguments to try to avoid the extradition, such as claims of undue interference by US law enforcement, etc etc.
It all takes time, and the administration of justice in Canada is incredibly slow. So slow, in fact, that Canada's Supreme Court had to impose time restrictions on many trials. Violate the restrictions, lose the case.
When Meng's extradition hearings began, she was quoted as suggesting she should enroll in a PhD program at the local university, as it would take a few years to complete both the hearings and the doctoral degree!
Yes, China and all of its ransom and hostage taking friends will be laughing their heads off. Now they know, do something the rest of the world does not like, do not worry. All it will take is a few hostages, and you will be fine.
Best not to travel or have anything to do with China and its corrupt quisling friends
> Now they know, do something the rest of the world does not like, do not worry.
In other words they're learning to act like the USA. Let's hope they stop before they start USA style military interventions.
.............................................................................................................................. Icon: Where's the occupied Europe icon?
The problem is that the playbook to study is so goddamned long. ..... jason_derp
It is not a problem and easily mastered whenever one realises it is a series of one-trick ponies, jason_derp.
And that must be very concerning indeed, for it does not bode at all well for those intellectual challenged playmates if the future is more than likely to be considerably smarter and more switched on to virtual events than was ever the case possible before. But hey, that's real progress ..... chock full of so many crazy surprises.
Well, how else are the hostages supposed to be retrieved when China has nuclear weapons? If regime change had been an option, that would be different.
Of course free countries do not regard any of their citizens as expendable. That is a good thing, even if it can be exploited as a weakness. The next step, of course, is not to allow any Canadians to travel to China in the future, so that China has no further opportunities to take hostages.
And now that the two Michaels are safely home, there should be consequences for China.
How about this:
The U.S. declares China a rogue state, and halts all further access by China to U.S. technology.
The U.S. and Canada, for starters, and presumably soon all their allies, perhaps starting with Australia, restore full normal diplomatic relations with the Republic of China by opening embassies in Taipei.
I think with these and similar measures, China's economic progress will soon go into reverse.
Don't impose a ban on trade. The whole western alliance should impose massive and rapidly growing taxes on all imports and exports to/from China.
The free market will solve the problem by setting up factories in (now) cheaper countries. You won't need to ban trade once the taxes are high enough.
You are deranged
China is Australia's biggest customer ... most of their purchases are commodities [by definition, easily substituted]
China has already shown Australia a few small examples of what happens if you gratuitously piss off your biggest customer ... consider the $3b pa wine sales which vanished overnight, there is no sign of a resumption.
There's a lot of spin on the US news release. According to the CBC Meng pleaded not guilty at the hearing on Friday via video conference. Her position had always been that the US had no legal authority over what happened in China between a British bank and a Chinese company regardless of what took place.
Meng now gets to go home, having not admitted guilt or being convicted of anything. In just over a year the US will drop the charges.
It is quite possible that the reason why the US made this offer at this time was because the case was falling apart in Vancouver over issues relating to abuse of process and other matters that are rarely reported in the foreign press. The US now have a way out of the situation without losing too much face.
We should also not forget by the way the US government had fairly early on in this process offered to trade Meng for a trade deal on terms favourable to the US. That offer came from the very highest levels of the US government, so it can't be dismissed as inconsequential.
The overall situation has been some great power posturing with both sides displaying some very unsavoury behaviour towards Canada. Canada is happy to get out from in between this particular US-China pissing match and does not want to get trapped in another.
"the US had no legal authority over what happened"
Given that it apparently involved American HP IT gear going into Iran and some part of $100m in sanctions-busting financial transactions, keywords US dollars, Uncle Sam disagrees.
FWIW she pleaded not guilty in a virtual hearing with a NY court on Friday, though did not dispute the accuracy of the US prosecution's claims made against her.
Bit of a 'agree to disagree' situation, perhaps, to resolve this increasingly ugly situation.
Don't forget, Huawei's CEO was banging on about how he wants foreign scientists settling in China to work on 6G in cities that look just like home. Kinda hard to persuade people to come into the mainland if they risk end up being pawns in the next political fight Beijing finds itself in.
C.
> Don't forget, Huawei's CEO was banging on about how he wants foreign scientists settling in China to work on 6G in cities that look just like home. Kinda hard to persuade people to come into the mainland if they risk end up being pawns in the next political fight Beijing finds itself in.
As I mentioned in that article's comments, Huawei and China are beyond delusional for thinking they can have their cake and eat it too on this one. Why would anyone who isn't fully incompetent or an actual spy even consider this offer?
"Why would anyone who isn't fully incompetent or an actual spy even consider this offer?"
Since you asked:
1) because they want to work for a highly innovative hi-tech company
2) because they know that engineers who stick to their job have zero chance of being arrested for political reasons
3) because they think a few years in China would be a good CV item
4) because they love Chinese culture
5) because they are of Chinese ethnicity
6) because Cisco just fired them
I'm sure there are other reasons too.
Since the relevant case here is the extradition one, Huawei could have sold whatever they wanted in Iran and it wouldn't have mattered because Canada was still part of the European deal with Iran and didn't have any sanctions against Iran. The US sanctions only applied to the US because Trump pulled out of the deal and was trying to do whatever he could to undermine it.
The reason the charge was constructed as "fraud" was in order to get around that issue because they had to come up with something that would have been illegal in Canada as well (what's called "dual criminality").
Whether or not the "fraud" charge would have ever stood up in a Canadian court would not be relevant, as guilt or innocence play no part in an extradition hearing, just whether both countries have a similar overall crime on the books and if there was enough evidence to justify going to trial. I'll point out that it doesn't have to be particularly good evidence, but there needs to be an impressively thick folder with "stuff" in it.
Meng's lawyers obtained an unedited version of the presentation in question. The US version had been edited by US officials to remove certain sections. According to press reports the original version showed that HSBC had information relating to the relationship between Huawei and Skycom which the US had claimed the bank was not aware of.
The actual basis of the US claim was that while officials at the bank may have been aware of these, a VP was not a senior enough official to claim that the "bank" new. Rather, according to the US a bank VP was a "junior" official and so that didn't count.
However the judge in Vancouver pointed out that this strayed into issues of guilt or innocence, which wasn't an issue for an extradition court to deal with. She therefore wasn't going to look at it.
The reason the US claimed jurisdiction was that HSBC chose to clear the funds for the transaction through a US clearing centre. If they had chosen to clear the funds elsewhere the US wouldn't have had that handle on the issue. Why HSBC chose to take the risk of clearing an Iran related transaction through the US given the heavy political risks of that is a question that nobody has ever answered but I'm sure would be very interesting if we were to ever find out.
The issues that were of concern to the judge related to abuse of process that happened in Vancouver. There were apparently lots of dodgy dealings going on between the RCMP and Canadian immigration control officials and their US counterparts in relation to this case in which Canadian police were doing questionable favours for their US mates. A series of hearings on this had just concluded and there was another coming up in October. This was always Meng's strongest defence in terms of extradition because while what happened in Hong Kong might not have been relevant to to the judge, what happened in Vancouver very much was.
Should all that have failed after various appeals, the final step before extradition would have been to appeal to the attorney general on the grounds that the extradition was politically motivated. Trump's offer to exchange Meng for a trade deal would have had a prime place in that. A long series of retired diplomats and cabinet ministers and even a former PM were all advising Trudeau that he had enough reason to cancel the extradition on those grounds and to send Meng home. The reason why Trudeau treated the issue as being radioactive was because of the unrelated SNC legal scandal which came up at around the same time and which ended up costing the government their majority. Without that there is a good chance that Meng would have been on her way home fairly early on in this process.
Ottawa had been pressuring Washington to make a "deal" of some sort to resolve the situation in order to get Ottawa out from between a rock and hard place. Canadian proposals revolved around the sort of deferred prosecution agreement which the US normally uses in these sorts of cases when they involve their own companies. This didn't get anywhere while Trump was in power, but apparently Biden was more inclined to accommodate Canada in that.
So what it looks like from the perspective of someone in Canada who has been following the case in the press regularly is that multiple factors finally came together to resolve the issue in a manner which gets Canada out of a difficult situation.
...Canada was still part of the European deal with Iran and didn't have any sanctions against Iran...
Well, no. Canada has laws against violating sanctions. If you violate a sanction you get prosecuted, and if you do it elsewhere you get extradited.
Canada has laws against robbing banks, too. If a bank robber robs a Wells Fargo branch then flees to Canada he gets extradited for robbing a bank. He can't plead "there's no law about robbing a Wells Fargo here in Canada", and expect that to be an accepted defence.
The judge and the lawyers in this case don't happen to agree with you on this question and I'm pretty sure they know more about Canadian and international law than you do.
The question of whether the case was about sanctions or "fraud" was the subject of hearings which were well reported in the Canadian press. If the "essence" of the case was US sanctions then the extradition case would have been tossed out.
This precise point was discussed in detail in court as one of Meng's defences was that US sanctions do not apply in Canada. If the judge had agreed that the extradition request was really about sanctions the case would have been tossed very early on and Meng would have gone home a long time ago.
If you have been relying on reports in the foreign press about what happened in this case then you are probably very misinformed as the foreign reporting that I have seen has been abysmal.
You would need to have been reading the extensive Canadian press reports from the beginning to know what has actually been taking place.
Reading the decision, US vs Meng, 2020 BCSC 785, the essence was the double-criminality test for an alleged fraud causing some form of harm, including risk, to the bank (HSBC). The risk was an inadvertent sanctions violation by the bank, as they relied on Ms Meng's statements denying such risk, or at least that was the US position.
My point about bank robbers is valid, and relevant to a fraud trial. The case was about fraud not sanctions; sanction violation was the (presumably hidden) risk faced by HSBC bank. The alleged offense was concealing the sanctions risk, not actually violating the sanctions.
Huawei (the company) is still facing further charges.
Given how Biden's administration is behaving, essentially playing to the China tune - leaving Bagram - nearest base to Xinjiang where Uyghur genocide takes place, antagonising allies and weakening NATO, forcing economy stifling socialist package that will make the US less competitive than China and many more blunders... and then when you learn about Biden's son shady dealings with China, it paints a bleak picture for the US. Probably this is one of another "favours" Biden has to do for China or else...
You should really check the dosage of whatever medication you're on.
Biden has enough domestic disasters to fix before he can put his shoulders under a decent foreign policy. The US needs to come off its high horse of wanting to control everything through brute force. If the Chinese get ahead in technology through actual science, the answer is not to blackmail every Chinese businessman passing through with jail time, the answer is to finally fix the crumbling educational system.
There is still a lot of potential in the US, but if the smart people have to fight to earn a living due to a broken economy and not being born into a rich family nothing is going to improve. Also, protecting US companies via a bent legal system is not competing, it's hiding the truth until it becomes so self evident that the myth no longer holds and then you have yet another collapse.
In addition, it's kinda hard to tell China that it's discriminating when you still don't treat non-white people right in your own country.
After fixing that, yes, then Biden can try policing the world again. At the moment, his moronic and corrupt orange predecessor has pretty much stripped all his moral standing.
Well, no, I just got bored from being reasonable when facing guff. Why should you have all the fun?
And gaslighting continues...
I am not giving China a pass (plenty of things to fix there too), btw, but in this case (and often) it's the US that initiate the problem.
Cognitive dissonance and blame-shifting.
I am sure these techniques you are using work on some people...
It was only under Biden, not Trump, that the strategic need to bolster US chipmaking was recognized and acted upon. It's the difference between blustering chest thumping and actually taking steps to improve ones own weaknesses. Improving ones own weaknesses can only happen when you admit them - but blustering chest thumpers can't do that because they believe they are already perfect and can do no wrong.
So you want to throw a few more trillions down the Afghan hole. 90% comes back to your contractor friends and cycles though lobbyists and congress, so what's the problem? Only the US loses.
Biden is a tragically poor president, but he can't be blamed for the astonishingly weak position he inherited from Trump. Which included the Afghan debacle, the Huawei nonsense and the Iran fiasco - all disasters engineered, essentially from nothing, by Trump.
(The same Trump, incidentally, who instituted the biggest peacetime federal economic intervention since the space race, by bailing out farmers affected by his own suicidal trade wars.)
Biden was selected, nominated and elected on a platform of just four words: "I can beat Trump". Nobody talked or cared about anything else. And such was the depth of loathing for his predecessor that that was enough to win the biggest popular vote in US history.
If giving false reassurances to and in a form requested by the bank is defrauding the bank then (with acknowledgements to Eric Morecambe) I am prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet.
Banks routinely ask for such documented reassurances to put on their file so they can claim to be innocent dupes then get on with making lots of money from the underlying transaction. It is like asking a money-launderer (or sanctions-buster) "Are you a money-launderer / sanctions- buster" and hoping for, and getting, a "No - Scout's Honour" answer.
It's very important to not be knowingly supporting crime. When I sold bitcoins, if anyone told me they were going to use them for drugs, I had to cancel the transaction. When I bought drugs, I had to tell the people I was using them to calibrate my personal GC/MS. See how it works?
If you are Chinese in china then you are charged with corruption.
If you are non Chinese in china then you are charged with espionage.
It is the same every time you read about shit like this. I live for the day when President Pooh Bear gets his name in the media being charged with corruption and I hope I don't have to wait too long. He is the one who wants to rape and pillage the chip industry in the Republic of China (aka Taiwan), rapidly steal the South China Sea and blame every other country in the world for the shit china does.
The only good thing at the moment is china trying to be friends with the Taliban. At some stage the arrogant, two faced lying, thieving CCP arseholes will hopefully try military action against Afghanistan and we know what happened to all other "invaders" of that land of disjointed tribes. Due to their arrogance the CCP and their military sock puppets will assume the Afghanis will be a walk over and whoever is leading the country when the body bags start going home will not last and hopefully his family gets a bill for the cost of the "judgement" bullet. Maybe then we can have a bit more of a stable world without the ridiculous blustering of the biggest IP thieves in history (how else did they advance technologically so fast without doing the research & development without stealing other countries & businesses IP).
Whenever one finally recognises and concludes that the crony Western fiat capitalism model and misleading mainstream media narrative way is toxic, destructive and very quickly, eventually surprisingly self-defeating, is there sure to be a natural flight of talent to that which the West has been preaching for decades/centuries is an existential threat to its healthy survival.
Many commenting here on this thread may not see that as inevitable, but in any system which does not care for the honest truth to be always told and thus would aspire and conspire to pimp/pump and dump the erroneous fake as a plausible alternative for ignorant acceptance and arrogant belief, is such a fate its destiny.
And the likes of a leading initiative such as Xi Jinping calls on world to OPEN UP to science & tech partnerships with China can certainly be novel groundbreaking and otherworldly Earth shattering and be very attractive to many who be rightly disgusted with the increasingly perverse and inequitable ways of the easily led and corruptible West.
Bravo, Chinese President Xi Jinping. Well said, Sir. I second that motion ...... for what is there for a sane person not to like. :-) .......... is an alien Jolly Roger flag nailed securely to a clippers' masts most definitely methinks.:-)
I am so afraid that I listen to you
Your sun glassed protectors they do that to you
It's their ways to detain, their ways to disgrace
Their knee in your balls and their fist in your face
Yes, and long live the state by whoever it's made
Sir, I didn't see nothing, I was just getting home late
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