In December 2018, Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada and faced extradition to the United States after she allegedly broke sanctions against Iran. Now, a Canadian court has ruled that her extradition case must continue.
Meng was arrested at the request of the U.S. which said she had committed bank fraud after allegedly misleading HSBC about a Huawei-owned company’s dealing with Iran, which is under U.S. sanctions. Meng had subsequently denied the claim and says she’s innocent of the charges. The arrest has also caused a response from China which said that she couldn’t have broken the law as Canada didn’t have sanctions against Iran at the time of the arrest, however, Canada says that the issue was the alleged fraud, not the existence of sanctions.
The arrest of Meng Wanzhou is just one move the United States has made against Huawei. As one of the main targets in the China-U.S. trade war, Huawei has come under significant pressure from the U.S., in recent day, for example, the U.S. forced Taiwanese firm, TSMC, to stop selling chips to Huawei forcing the Chinese firms to look for hardware in its home country.
The United States has also been lobbying its allies to ban Huawei hardware from their 5G networks. It has had varying levels of success in these efforts and most recently, the United Kingdom said it would look again at the issue and is expected to release its decision at a later date.
The court"s ruling against Meng Wanzhou comes as another blow for Huawei. The decision to continue the case could also see China retaliate in some way against Canada but it"s unclear how at this point.