The world continues to look to Vancouver, where a Huawei manager fought for her release from detention.
Meng Wanzhou, 46, chief financial officer of Chinese communications giant Huawei, was arrested on December 1 for transit on US arrest warrants at the Canada metro airport.
Now a judge in the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the manager will be released on bail – while the Canada judiciary decides on the United States extradition request: her lawyers had recently offered a bail of 15 million Canadian dollars (9.9 million euros) , as well as a private security service to check the conditions.
Access had led to a rage in China: Meng is considered one of the most famous business women there, and her reputation has been compared to Facebook’s No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg, 49, in the US. Since then, ice age prevails between Beijing and Washington, it haunts the stock markets.
A federal court in Brooklyn (New York) accuses the star manager of lying to US banks regarding former Iranian illegal business of Hong Kong-based Skycom. She allegedly falsely claimed that Skycom had acted as a separate company independent of Huawei – but in fact it was a subsidiary.
On August 22, a New York judge issued an international arrest warrant. For more than ten days, she stewed in the jail Alouette Correctional Center for Women.
Meng had asserted before the verdict before the court that she would make no attempt to escape: „I have been working hard for 25 years. If I am to be fired, my only simple goal is to be with my husband and daughter. I have not read a novel for years, „she said.
Her lawyers had offered that the security company „Lions Gate Risk Management Group“ would turn off twelve former police officers and military military veterans for their 24/7 security. Defender David Martin argued that with an electronic ankle bracelet their whereabouts could be fully monitored.
However, the prosecution, which attested a high risk of escape because of „enormous financial resources“, countered that the device would run on a Rogers mobile network doing business with Huawei … Prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley had demanded that Meng be detained stay – or at least be under house arrest.
Her husband, „Venture Capital“ investor Liu Xiaozong, 43, was usually in the audience gallery on these dramatic negotiating days, he also said himself. Meng himself wore a green sweater from the detention center. She looked mostly composed, sometimes smiling embarrassed.
The court drama also offered insights into the private and luxury life of the previously so public-afraid star manager:
▶ ︎ The daughter of the legendary Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei (74) owns two magnificent properties in Vancouver together with her husband, worth 3.7 million euros, the second 10.7 million euros.
▶ ︎ Meng has four children: she raises a small daughter with her new husband, three sons come from a previous marriage.
▶ ︎ In 2011 she had to undergo surgery for thyroid cancer. Her lawyers wrote in a 55-page submission that she suffers from high blood pressure and sleep apnea syndrome. She had to be treated for hypertension after being confined.
▶ ︎ Meng temporarily had a kind of „green card“ (permanent residence permit) in Canada, which was withdrawn. US officials claim that the mighty businesswoman has owned seven different passports over the last eleven years.
▶ ︎ How rich Meng himself is remains unclear, but Forbes estimates her father’s assets at $ 3.2 billion (€ 2.8 billion).
The process also revealed dramatic details about the Americans‘ hunt for the Huawei manager, CNN reports : since the summer, the Marshalls lurked, but Meng avoided the North American continent. At the end of November, however, they sensed a chance for access: Meng was scheduled to spend twelve hours in transit after a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong on December 1, prior to a planned onward journey to Mexico. US officials sought their arrest in Canada. „Without access, it would be extremely silent to carry out the prosecution in the US,“ it said in the application.
According to previously disclosed details, Meng faces up to 30 years in prison for „fraud in the millions“ due to the indictment of the Eastern District of New York.
Huawei subsidiary Skycom has bypassed Iran sanctions and sold US computer equipment to an Iranian telecom company, according to US Justice. About the bank HSBC alone ran money transfers of more than $ 100 million.
Meng, on the other hand, pretended that Huawei had nothing to do with the embargo crushers.
„Timing is not a coincidence, of course,“ says Jonathan Cristol, a foreign policy expert at Adelphi University, on BILD: „China is beating Canada with a kind of escalating tit-for-tat response, and wants a direct confrontation with the US Avoid USA – but of course Canada is in this situation because of Washington, since they had no choice but to detain Ms. Meng as soon as the US application was made. „
