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The chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei reached an agreement with US prosecutors to defer prosecution on Friday to avoid felony fraud charges, paving the way for her release after nearly three years of detention in Canada.
U.S. Department of Justice lawyer David Kessler stated in a hearing in Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York that the government agreed to suspend the prosecution of Meng Wanzhou until December 1, 2022. If she complies with the terms of the agreement, the charges will be It is revoked.
He further suggested that “Ms. Meng should be released with a personal guarantee.”
Meng agreed with the statement of facts in the case, in which she was accused of defrauding HSBC and other banks by falsely distorting the connection between Huawei and Skycom, an affiliate that sells telecommunications equipment to Iran.
But Meng, who appeared in court via video transmission from Vancouver, insisted on her defense of “not guilty” in the political bombing case.
Judge Ann Donnelly approved the agreement and said: “I found that the government has determined that the deferred prosecution agreement is true.”
As the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, Meng is known internally as the company’s “princess” and possible future leader.
She was detained in December 2019, triggering a major diplomatic crisis that lasted for several years, and exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing—and involved Canada in the struggle to detain two Canadian citizens. Seen as a tit-for-tat revenge by China.
Meng, 49, was arrested under a U.S. arrest warrant in Vancouver, Canada. She has been trapped there ever since to fight extradition to the United States.
After the agreement is reached, her house arrest in Vancouver is now expected to be lifted, and the extradition case will also be dropped.
As a member of Skycom’s board of directors, Meng Wanzhou was accused of covering up the company’s financial transactions through the U.S. financial system, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, and lying to FBI investigators.
But the case came to an end in a broader battle between the United States and China over Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies.
Huawei insists that it is an independent private company, but Washington claims that the Chinese government has control over it and can use its equipment for intelligence gathering.
The Pentagon listed Huawei as a military-backed company that should avoid signing contracts, and pointed out that its founder, Ren Zhengfei, was an engineer in the People’s Liberation Army.
The US government and military have banned Huawei equipment and are trying to get other local governments and private companies to abandon the company’s widely used routers and switching equipment.
The United States also prohibits American technology companies from exporting certain equipment and materials to Huawei, and encourages other countries to abandon Huawei equipment.
In 2008, the United States secretly issued an arrest warrant against Meng and pressed Canada to arrest Meng when he flew to Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2019.
As the U.S. Department of Justice pushed Meng Wanzhou to be extradited, Meng was placed under house arrest in Canada.
She could face 30 years in prison for these allegations, which China calls “completely political.”
A few days after her arrest, China detained two Canadians, businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Cumming, accusing them of espionage.
Both were tried in March, and Spavor was sentenced to 11 years in prison in August.
No decision has been announced in Kovrig’s case.
Western countries accuse China of arresting and accusing Canadians of “hostage diplomacy.”
The relationship between Beijing and Ottawa has bottomed out in this case and the case of Canadians detained in China.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned Spavor’s verdict as “unacceptable and unfair” and said that these allegations were “fabricated.”
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