Huawei invokes 140-year-old law at England's High Court in latest bid to thwart CFO's US-Canada extradition Huawei today turned to the British courts in its fight to keep CFO Meng Wanzhou out of American prosecutors’ hands. The Chinese super-corp invoked a law from 1879 at the High Court in London, England, to get its hands on a HSBC UK Powerpoint presentation it argued will help the chief beancounter escape extradition. Wanzhou, …
Disagree. It would set a precedent that any documents held by banks, including internal memos, risk assessments etc, to be seized due to a court proceeding. That sounds like a broad stroke and is a risk to any policy making or decision making where someone comes to harm and decides to sue. For example if their insurance claim is denied. Doesnt sound like they need to care whats in the PowerPoint to be opposed, in my opinion
Also... even if that particular PowerPoint can be interpreted in support the idea that Huawei didn't mislead HSBC, it's absolutely certain that there were other documents involved in the relationship, and it's entirely possible that the PowerPoint in isolation was supportive, but the rest of the documents may have been more damning.
Remember, the US _has_ that document, and so if the extradition is successful, it will be provided to the defense at trial _in the USA_. So this is an effort to block extradition, not an effort to prove anything about the underlying charges.
It's also... _odd_ that she / Huawei can't produce their own copy of the blasted thing. Remember, the suggestion is that this PPT shows Huawei didn't mislead HSBC... so why do they need something that HSBC has?
It's also... _odd_ that she / Huawei can't produce their own copy of the blasted thing. Remember, the suggestion is that this PPT shows Huawei didn't mislead HSBC... so why do they need something that HSBC has?
According to the article she "seeks evidence of internal deliberations within the HSBC Group" not the PPT itself. That would provide proof that the presentation was actually made. Just providing a file without provenance wouldn't be useful - the prosecution could simply allege it had been put together after the non-existent event.
Disagree. It would set a precedent that any documents held by banks, including internal memos, risk assessments etc, to be seized due to a court proceeding.
Yes, but ...
If they have nothing to hide, and wish to avoid setting such a precedent, all they have to do is to release the requested information voluntarily.
There's a huge difference between a disclosure pursuant to a court order and handing stuff over just because someone is asking for it.
Meanwhile, the judge's comments about how this is an attempt to obtain through the English courts what the Canadian courts won't deliver leaves going... "Hmmm"!
dajames: "If they have nothing to hide, and wish to avoid setting such a precedent, all they have to do is to release the requested information voluntarily."
I have never known a bank to release any information voluntarily that was not directly required of them by law, or would result in them getting more money. By default banks work on the principle that they keep all information secret unless required to provide it.
There is even a specific banking privacy act which prevented a man who complained to the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (I think it was) that the bank had wrongly sued him for a £300,000 loan he never took out, from finding out the result of the FCA's own inquiry! (I remember the case quite well, it was reported here in el Reg, but many years ago, apologies I cannot find a link.)
This case seems to be peculiar in that the 'banker's books' in question are unlikely ever to have been within the UK, and the UK court is being asked to intervene in international court proceedings between the USA and Canada, so potentially lots of precedents being set if allowed.
"Disagree. It would set a precedent that any documents held by banks, including internal memos, risk assessments etc, to be seized due to a court proceeding."
That's true. No business wants to be in a position of possibly setting detrimental precedents. On the other hand, if there was nothing to hide, why didn't they just offer it when first requested rather then waiting for it to get to a court case and possible legal direction to produce it? Clearly Huawei asked HSBC for this document though normal channels and for whatever reason, were refused, hence now going down legal channels.
Unless, of course, the document DOES show what Huawei say and HSBC are under pressure from the US to NOT provide because they expect it to halt the extradition. They can't have that because they want their day in court where they can throw lots of almost evidence, loads of circumstantial evidence. Enough so that all together it looks like real evidence.
Of course, it could be that the US are correct and when the evidence comes out in court it turns out she and Huawei ARE guilty,
To slightly mis-quote the barrister, it's all very nuanced.
Equally IANAL, but I don't think that's so. A court lower than at the appellate level (which includees High Court in England and Wales) may set a precedent if a particular point of law has not yet been tested in court. Of course, such a decision may be appealed, but until such time as it's overturned by a higher court, that precedent may be relied upon by courts at the same level in the hierarchy or lower.
As far as I recall, when my mother was a lay magistrate she told me that magistrates' courts could not try any case that would involve setting a legal precedent. Any higher court (county court or above) could set a precedent, but that could be appealed all the way to the House of Lords (then) UK Supreme Court (now), and then on to the European Court of Human Rights in some circumstances.
This makes sense. Lay magistrates are not professionals and generally try only minor crimes (they could not sentence anyone to more than 6 months imprisonment for a single offence, for example) but could send people to the crown court for sentencing. Crown court judges are professionals and tend to have studied law a lot.
Not sure why you've been downvoted, you make perfectly valid comments. In my limited experience it seems that magistrates are far more connected with real life and therefore most family court matters, so despite the legal profession looking down on them I'd take the "magis" any day over a district judge. Both have other people explain the law to them in hearings - magistrates have a legal advisor and district judges have the barristers.
That would be because it was migistrates' court, which, as you point out, is limited in the cases it can hear and sentences it can try.
Crown (criminal) or High (civil) court, may set a precedent with aruling, if it refers to a matter as yet untested, but such matters are rare at that level, vanishingly so when it comes to criminal law.
Surely there is an obvious difference between claims for decisions regarding loss and something that puts someone at the mercy of another countries legal system.
That a companies internal papers are required surely is relevant in the cladding inquiry - and logically any case where a death has been involved should have access to all that is relevant.
I believe that there is a 'full disclosure' process of all documents relevant to a case, but don't know whether that covers the Grenfell Tower disaster. In any case, the Huawei case is using an act specifically about bankers' books.
The Grenfell Tower cladding disaster people are claiming that there is a French law preventing them giving evidence to the inquiry, so if there e are any French legal experts on the Register, I'm sure we'd all appreciate some info on that.
Not necessarily. If I was HSBC, I would also oppose what appears to be a misreading of the law that would open up access to documents not covered.
Note that this is not an HSBC Powerpoint presentation. It is the defendant's, unless I'm misreading the article. Why can she not provide the document, and have someone from HSBC verify its contents if necessary?
Tying it together with the reports of court proceedings in Canada, Meng's lawyers are arguing that the US government presented false, misleading, and incomplete evidence with regards to Meng's dealings with HSBC, but HSBC are required by the US to obey their orders (they are under a "cooperation" order from the US).
The US case revolves entirely around whether HSBC was aware of the full nature of Huawei's relationship with Skycom. If they were, then any US complaints have to be directed to HSBC. If they weren't, then this is what the fraud claim is based on.
The problem for the US case is that one of the important elements of their case is that they claimed that only junior HSBC employees were aware of Huawei's relationship with Skycom. Legal discovery in Vancouver has shown that these supposedly "junior employees" held the position of VP at HSBC.
The US also presented copies to the court of Meng's Powerpoint presentation with critical bits which might absolve her edited out. Some might call this tampering with evidence, but not being a lawyer I won't speculate on that.
What Meng's lawyers appear to be trying to do in this case is get their hands on original copies of HSBC's own documents relating to this before the US applied their creative writing skills to them.
I suppose that if it turns out that if the extradition case gets tossed out in Vancouver then the US may take out their frustration on HSBC, so the bank may have something lo lose in this after all.
One of the key witnesses in the Canadian police or customs (I can't recall which) engaged in Meng's arrest is currently hiding out in Macau, has hired his own lawyer, and is refusing to testify in the case. This certainly caused a few eyebrows to be raised among people that I know. I supposed it's rather odd that he feels safer in Macau than in Vancouver, but there have been quite a few odd things about all this.
Recent speculation in Canada has been that Ottawa may get Washington to agree to drop charges against Meng personally and to charge Huawei as a corporation instead in return for considerations on other bilateral diplomatic issues (oil, climate change, electricity, or something else that Biden wants from Canada). That way Canada can escape from being a pawn in a fight which has nothing to do with it.
There's a saying that goes along the lines of "when two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled". We'll have to see how this all goes I suppose.
The claim is Skycomm sold $1.3 million of HP servers to Iran in 2010. That Skycomm is a hidden Huawei subsidiary, citing an employee who has a Huawei email address. Since HP server kit is banned for sale to Iran this would be a crime.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/huaweis-unofficial-skycom-allegedly-used-to-break-sanctions
Complete with a leaked packing list:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-iran-sanctions-exclusive/exclusive-newly-obtained-documents-show-huawei-role-in-shipping-prohibited-u-s-gear-to-iran-idUSKBN20P1VA
The packing list here:
https://static.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20200302&t=2&i=1497708893&r=LYNXMPEG211H2&w=1024
The English one, That's an excel sheet right? I notice the little green tab on one of the cells like Excel. IT HAS A HUAWEI LOGO. Ooo a smoking gun, no need to prove Skycomm is a Huawei subsidiary when they literally use the Huawei logo in their shipping spreadsheets! Oh and if we're not certain this is for nukes, they even include "Shiraz site" in English no less. Sooooo many many smoking guns here.
The date is US format date, 12/13/2010 9:41 you know that USA only uses that date format right? China uses y/m/d,, Iran uses DMY. Gregorian calendar! 2010, 2010 years since the birth of baby Jeebus... in countries that don't worship the baby Jeebus.... FFS.
So an excel sheet that's using the Gregorian calendar and US date format!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
Not suspicious at all, no sir..... oh boy.
OK, so lets go digging, does Huawei make their own servers? Could they or this Skycomm subsidiary simply ship Huawei kit instead and avoid the ban on shipping HP kit as a result?
Yes:
https://e.huawei.com/en/products/servers/rh-series/
And did they make those servers back in 2010? Yes:
https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/doc/EDOC1100014662/6660ea30/front-panel-components
"The first character indicates the year. Digits 1 to 9 indicate 2001 to 2009, letters A to H indicate 2010 to 2017"....
So why is Huawei selling US HP kit to Iran.... instead of Huawei kit to Iran????
I call "Trump bollocks" on this.
Can you imagine going to Huawei.....
Iranian : "Huawei salesman, we want to buy some HP servers"
Huawei salesman: "We have some excellent servers, here's a catalog with our full FusionServer Pro range".
Iranian: "But I want *HP* servers, this is why I'm going to a competitor of HP and asking you to sell me servers for your competitor"....
"Iranian: "But I want *HP* servers, this is why I'm going to a competitor of HP and asking you to sell me servers for your competitor"...."
Certainly Sir. We will sell you as many Huawei Processing servers as you like.
Look, I tell you what, we'll even build a special version, just for you. Bigger and better than what anyone else can buy. We'll even add a special letter "I" designation to the badge so Everyone will know they are designed just for Iran. We'll change the badge to Huawei Processing Iran, or HPI, just for you.
> So why is Huawei selling US HP kit to Iran.... instead of Huawei kit to Iran????
Huawei: It could be bad for us if someone leaks pictures of racks of servers, with our logo on, in an Iranian plant.
Huawei: But, we want the trade
Actually, I also think there's a high chance of this being Trump bollocks, but the above is an easily plausible answer to that specific question.
> The trade Huawei want isn't a trade in a competitors servers!
That's not necessarily true, and shows a certain lack of imagination.
You're the only company willing to work with Iran (that you know of). You don't want racks of servers with your name on showing up in that country though.
So you sell competitors servers, at a hefty markup. Where else are they going to buy them from? It's not like they can go direct to that competitor.
> Huawei's trade is making and selling Huawei servers. Generalizing that to a single word "trade", only words as a rhetorical trick.
That's also not entirely true. Huawei have many "trades" beyond making and selling Huawei servers, including building and running services (on whatever hardware you might have)
>> So why is Huawei selling US HP kit to Iran....
Huawei didn't sell US HP kit, it was a company called Skycom Tech Co Ltd.
The key US allegation is that Huawei controlled Skycom Tech Co Ltd. and thus it is Huawei who broke US sanctions - in part because the US have been unable to directly get at the directors of Skycom Tech Co Ltd. and so simply availed themselves of an opportunity to grab a key person in Huawei that would cause people to sit up and take notice...
As we know the US won't care about whether there is or isn't any real evidence of connection between Huawei and Skycom, because the charge sheet is so long (expect "wire fraud" will be on the sheet somewhere) there is plenty of room for 'negotiation' (both with Huawei and China) once Meng Wanzhou is in the hands of the US authorities.
And while the sanctions against Iran may be valid, why are transactions between 3rd parties that are not American, even it was Huawei, actually crimes with extradition to USA? A Country proven to be biased against people not American and against foreign companies that rarely ever permits any of their citizens to be extradited, especially if soldiers or diplomats. Diplomatic immunity isn't a wildcard get out of jail free thing.
So yet another one sided USA case, even if the allegations are true. This, Assange and Autonomy should be chucked out. These people are not people that have fled USA and are unlikely to get fair trials.
I kind of want to see them present their evidence in court, I think this will turn out like the "Cisco : they store our code" claim that turned out to a garbage.....
STRCMP, from the GNU standard lib, Glibc.
https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-the-record
But then again, a guy that murdered BLM protestors and jumped bail, didn't even have his bail revoked by a Trump judge. Another one gets organic food (obviously doing the 'I'm delicate and wouldn't hurt a fly' lawyer trick), another attacker one gets to go to Mexico on holiday to Mexico.... Another one the jury refuses to even sit to hear the evidence or that its constitutional to hear evidence.
Less law-and-order and more banana republic.
Strcmp, geez.
While I agree the extradition case is about fraud by lying to HSBC, this bit "It is not about Huawei selling servers to Iran" is not the whole story.
It should read "It is not about Huawei selling servers to Iran until it is, once she is on US soil."
Same time as soldiers in USA bases on Okinawa get tried by the Japanese for crimes committed outside the base.
The USA solved the driving issue in Okinawa by making the whole island drive on the right. Japan drives on the left like Ireland and the UK. Which side of the road to people drive on in the US areas of bases in the UK?
>Since HP server kit is banned for sale to Iran this would be a crime.
Not quite!
We've been here before, it was and is totally legal for HP or a US entity to sell HP server kit to Iran; provided they get the permission of the US authorities, a situation the Us authorities prefer, probably because they have greater visibility and oversight of such transactions...
I've watched the Chinese fishing here in Canada for months. They are so desperate at this point they'd probably try to claim her "life is at risk" if she is deported to the US from my home country of Canada.
She lives in luxury, meanwhile our two Michael's are in cold, cruel cells as vengeance over her arrest.
Good old Chinese. They always think they're above the law, much as the Americans do.
How I despise the arrogance of the so-called "world powers". :(
The idea that being an American toady - in this case facilitating the arrest of Meng Wanzhou - is without consequences has been shown to be dangerously naive.
A more recent example is Australia's gratuitous, sustained effort to piss off its largest customer. They are left with a $A30b per year problem.
My view is that the Chinese will, if necessary, make an example of Canada over this matter. Sort out the problem or get your ambassador out ASAP. I presume there are no other Canadians in China.
Canada created this problem for itself, it's up to you to fix it.
At least go through the motions. The end result does not matter a toss to HSBC but the way they get there does. They simply cannot be seen to cooperate with Huawei even though - in most jurisdictions - it would be quite lawful for them to do so. This is either Huawei data to kick off with, or it is the bank’s data - nobody else’s - which they are free to do with as they please.
But NOT to poke Uncle Sam in the eye.
The bank has paid billions in fines to the US. And they do not want to lose their US banking licence. Which the US regulatory authorities would do out of chagrin and spite : after all, this entire extradition thing is as much spite as justice.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
