Saturday, September 25, 2021

Huawei CFO flies back to China after US deal, detained Canadians head home



Huawei CFO flies back to China after US deal, detained Canadians head home


Meng Wanzhou (centre) leaves her home in Vancouver on Friday. (AP pic)

OTTAWA: Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou flew home to China on Friday after reaching an agreement with US prosecutors to end the bank fraud case against her, relieving a point of tension between China and the US.

Within hours of the news of the deal, two Canadians who were arrested shortly after Meng was taken into custody in December 2018 were released from Chinese jails and were on their way back to Canada. Beijing had denied that their arrests were linked.

The years-long extradition drama has been a central source of discord in increasingly rocky ties between Beijing and Washington, with Chinese officials signalling that the case needed to be dropped to help end a diplomatic stalemate.

The deal also opens US President Joe Biden to criticism from China hawks in Washington who argue his administration is capitulating to China and one of its top companies at the centre of a global technology rivalry between the two countries.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on a US warrant, and indicted on bank and wire fraud charges for allegedly misleading HSBC in 2013 about the telecommunications equipment giant’s business dealings in Iran.

In an exclusive on Friday, Reuters reported that the US had reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Meng.

Nicole Boeckmann, the acting US attorney in Brooklyn, said that in entering into the agreement, “Meng has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution.”

The agreement pertains only to Meng, and the US Justice Department said it is preparing for trial against Huawei and looks forward to proving its case in court.

China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the release of Meng or the Canadians.

A spokeswoman for Huawei declined to comment.

A person familiar with the matter said Meng – the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei – had left Canada on a flight to Shenzhen.

The two Canadians, businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, had been held in China for more than 1,000 days. In August, a Chinese court sentenced Spavor to 11 years in prison for espionage.

The International Crisis Group, where Kovrig works, said it was “overjoyed” at the “most just decision” to release him, thanking Canada and the US for their roles.

“The day we have been waiting for 1,020 days has finally arrived,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in brief remarks late on Friday the two men had left Chinese airspace just minutes before. He was not asked whether the two countries had struck a bilateral deal.

“I want to thank our allies and partners around the world in the international community who have stood steadfast in solidarity with Canada and with these two Canadians,” he said.

At a hearing in Brooklyn federal court on Friday, which Meng attended virtually from Canada, Assistant US Attorney David Kessler said the government would move to dismiss the charges against her if she complies with all of her obligations under the agreement, which ends in December 2022.

He added that Meng will be released on a personal recognisance bond, and that the US plans to withdraw its request to Canada for her extradition.

Meng pleaded not guilty to the charges in the hearing. When US District Court Judge Ann Donnelly later accepted the deferred prosecution agreement, Meng sighed audibly.

A Canadian judge later signed Meng’s order of discharge, vacating her bail conditions and allowing her to go free after nearly three years of house arrest.

She was emotional after the judge’s order, hugging and thanking her lawyers.

Speaking to supporters and reporters on the steps of the court afterward, Meng thanked the judge for her “fairness” and talked of how the case had turned her life “upside down”.

Meng was confined to her expensive Vancouver home at night and monitored 24/7 by private security that she paid for as part of her bail agreement.

Referred to by Chinese state media as the “Princess of Huawei”, she was required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor her movements, which became fodder for the tabloids when it hung above her designer shoes.

‘Huawei confidential’

Articles published by Reuters in 2012 and 2013 about Huawei, Hong Kong-registered company Skycom and Meng figured prominently in the US criminal case against her.

Reuters reported that Skycom had offered to sell at least €1.3 million worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran’s largest mobile-phone operator in 2010.

Reuters also reported numerous financial and personnel links between Huawei and Skycom, including that Meng had served on Skycom’s board of directors between February 2008 and April 2009. The stories prompted HSBC to question Meng about Reuters findings.

Huawei was placed on a US trade blacklist in 2019 that restricts sales to the company for activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests.

The restrictions have hobbled the company, which suffered its biggest revenue drop in the first half of 2021, after the US supply restrictions drove it to sell a chunk of its once-dominant handset business before new growth areas have matured.

The criminal case against Meng and Huawei is cited in the blacklisting. Huawei is charged with operating as a criminal enterprise, stealing trade secrets and defrauding financial institutions. It has pleaded not guilty.

A Canadian government official said Ottawa would not comment until the US court proceedings were over.

China vs US

Huawei has become a dirty word in Washington, with China hawks in Congress quick to react to any news that could be construed as the US being soft, despite Huawei’s struggles under the trade restrictions.

Then-president Donald Trump politicised the case when he told Reuters soon after Meng’s arrest that he would intervene if it would serve national security or help secure a trade deal.

Meng’s lawyers have said she was a pawn in the political battle between the two super powers.

Republican China hardliners in Congress called Friday’s deal a “capitulation”.

“Instead of standing firm against China’s hostage-taking and blackmail, President Biden folded,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement.

Senior US officials have said that Meng’s case was being handled solely by the Justice Department and the case had no bearing on the US approach to strained ties with China.

During US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s July trip to China, Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Xie Feng insisted that the US drop its extradition case against Meng.

US officials have acknowledged that Beijing had linked Meng’s case to the case of the two detained Canadians, but insisted that Washington would not be drawn into viewing them as bargaining chips.

13 comments:

  1. Meng Wanzhou in her speech before flying back to China, said :

    " I would like to thank my motherland and its people for the support and help which is biggest pillar of strength to me." There's also another tape which elaborates further her heartful thank to her government to help her overcome her darkest moment.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B7DybgHA1o

    An analyst on CGTN was spot on with this comment : The US attempt to coerce a private entity in this case goes beyond the modern norm. If China is any less unwavering and strong, the outcome would be very different"

    This brings to mind the Alstom case where the unfortunate French executive was imprisoned in the US and his company was forced to give up control over to the US General Electric.

    "Senior executive of Alstom, a French multinational company, was arrested by the US government in 2013 over corruption allegation.

    Read his story in "The American Trap: My battle to expose America's secret economic war against the rest of the world"

    "In April 2013, Frédéric Pierucci was arrested in New York by the FBI and accused of bribery. The US authorities imprisoned him for more than two years - including fourteen months in a notorious maximum-security prison. In doing so, they forced Alstom to pay the biggest financial penalty ever imposed by the United States. In the end, Alstom also gave up areas of control to General Electric, its biggest American competitor.

    Frédéric's story unpacks how the United States is using corporate law as an economic weapon against its own allies. One after the other, some of the world's largest companies are being actively destabilised to the benefit of the US, in acts of economic sabotage that seem to be the beginning of what's to come..."

    Ms Meng should write her version of " The American Trap" after being robbed 3 years of her life being confined to her house in Canada, not to mention the continual harassment and mental anguish she suffered all these years. If the agreement denied her this avenue to tell the details of her incarceration, someone else could write a tell-all book to expose such perfidy visited upon her.

    This US bitch lawyer had the audacity to blatantly lie even now.... Nicole Boeckmann, the acting US attorney in Brooklyn, said that in entering into the agreement, “Meng has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution.”

    Meng Wanzhou had categorically denied being guilty of the fraud case charges brought against her.

    Ms Meng by right ought to sue for compensation for false detention but knowing the low down dirty tactics of that Faker Democratic Hegemon, it is now even trying to wrangle a huge fine on Huawei to the tune of billions of dollars, just for releasing her from the kidnap. Indeed, true to its principle of " We lied, We cheated and We stole", the US insisted on having the last words to save face. As one commentator said pointedly :

    " I think the US jumped before being pushed. The Canadian court would have delivered an egg-on-the-face verdict in favour of Ms Meng".




    ReplyDelete
  2. Fact check - "two Canadians who were arrested shortly after Meng was taken into custody in December 2018"

    ??!!

    These two Canadians were arrested for spying against China months before the 'arranged' arrest of meng in December 2018!

    They were only formally charged after meng been taken into custody in Vancouver international airport in December 2018.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/25/canadian-pm-trudeau-says-detained-citizens-michael-kovrig-and-michael-spavor-have-left-china

      The two Michaels, as they came to be known, were detained in December 2018 on accusations of espionage, shortly after Vancouver police arrested Meng on a US warrant.

      Hostage diplomacy, aka government kidnapping indeed.

      Delete
    2. That's how they play fast and loose with facts to suit their agenda.

      Delete
  3. Japan's semiconductor industry was in full bloom in the 1980s with government support before it was ground down by the US. It had surpassed the US as the world's largest chip supplier, and its market share of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) products reached some 80 percent in 1987, according to a Los Angeles Times article in August 1992.

    Toshiba, Japan's leading chip producer at that time, was then targeted by the US over "national security concerns." After Toshiba and Norwegian military enterprise Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk, were found in 1986 to be secretly selling sophisticated milling machines to the Soviet Union, Washington issued a 2 to 5 year ban on all Toshiba Corporation products , saying the sale to the Soviet Union had posed a threat to US national security, and Toshiba had violated a Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) agreement, which prohibited members from exporting advanced weapons or machines to the Soviet Union.

    Toshiba was reportedly severely hit by the scandal. Two of its managers were sent to jail and several senior executives resigned. The company spent some 100 million yen ($0.95 million) on advertising in almost all major US newspapers apologizing for its actions. The scandal ended up hurting its reputation and prestige it had established globally. Its many technical documents were also allegedly seized during a CIA investigation.

    While it tormented Toshiba, Washington seemed to turn a blind eye to similar "wrongdoings" by its European peers. A Norwegian Police Service report revealed in 1987 that companies in several other member countries of CoCom, including France, Italy and West Germany had also sold the Soviets sophisticated milling machines, reported Los Angeles Times in October 1987. Few of these firms were specifically sanctioned by the US.

    Obviously, Washington's selective targeting of Toshiba was not just motivated by so-called national security concerns. Toshiba was seen as a threat to the development of US tech firms. "The US actually reached its goal of protecting domestic [chip] industry by suppressing its biggest rival with some high-sounding excuses".

    Toshiba's chip business continued to slide and the former global chip giant eventually sold its chip unit to US' Bain Capital at $18 billion in 2018, completely withdrawing from the chipmaking industry.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. by hook or by CROOK, the US wants to be No 1

      Delete
    2. it showed it's racist as well, and in the case of Israel, religiously biased too

      Delete
  4. Kenapa Bullylanders, bila sudah ada sikt wang gemar beli rumah mewah di barat dan keluarga duduk di sana?

    https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2177157/surprise-surprise-vancouver-huawei-cfo-sabrina-meng

    Macam ramai movie star Bullyland dan kita punya Santharan.

    Tak Patriotik, buat malu bagi Bullyland, Mao Baru mesti ambik tindakan.

    QUOTE
    Surprise, surprise, Vancouver: Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou is a mansion-owning, satellite-parenting reverse immigrant.

    Title documents on two Vancouver homes, worth US$16.4 million, identify Meng Wanzhou’s husband as Liu Xiaozong

    Meng’s current circumstances are remarkable, but her Canadian backstory is familiar – she is a reverse immigrant who left family members in Vancouver for years.
    Ian Young
    10 Dec, 2018

    Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou and her two Vancouver homes, which are in the name of husband Liu Xiaozong. The homes in the expensive neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and Dunbar are worth C$16.3 million and C$5.6 million respectively.
    UNQUOTE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Meng Wanzhou is still a Chinese citizen!

      The houses were registered under her husband!

      So, what's yr fart?

      Delete
  5. From these incidences of Alstom, Toshiba, Huawei (In the case of Huawei US of A try to rob and steal Huawei 5G technology, if could not succeed, try to sabotage and stall Huawei advancement and progress but which they still failed miserably even with the might of a country against a private company) these events confirmed and proved that US of A is the 'original' robber and thief of other countries intellectual properties and technologies.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Frederic Pierucci, former senior executive of Alstom of France, and author of the bestselling book, “The American Trap" complained tearfully: How did we get from the world's first to being forcibly acquired by the United States ?!

    Today, the US Government is eyeing China’s Huawei using a similar tactic.

    Don't repeat the same mistake that we made.

    " Alstom " is the brightest pearl in the French industry. At a glorious time, Alstom did the world's first hydropower equipment, nuclear power plant, conventional island world first, environmental control system world first, ultra-high-speed trains and high-speed trains world first. In terms of energy, we have provided equipment that accounts for 15% of the world’s total installed capacity, totaling 460 MW, ranking second in the world. Alstom and the American giant General Electric are global competitors.

    On April 14, 2013, at JFK International Airport in New York, I (Frederic Pierucci), as the vice president of Alstom International Sales, was detained by the FBI just after getting off the plane. I never expected that I would be arrested in a supposedly free and democratic country such as the United States. I never imagined that I would be prosecuted, then imprisoned on a trumped-up charge based on a vague and long forgotten case in Indonesia.
    What is even more shocking is that when I was in prison, my company Alstom was ruthlessly "dismembered" by the US government.

    Alstom, a French commercial giant that once spanned the global power, energy and rail transportation industry, was fined a massive USD772 million by the US Department of Justice. Not only that, the core business was "compulsorily" taken over by America’s General Electric - a major competitor of ours. The whole plot was secretly hatched behind closed doors of the United States with the knowledge of the Department of Justice to allow the US Government to obtain control of most of the nuclear power plants of France.

    When I was initially arrested by the FBI, I had no idea as to what was really happening. My heart was illusory, naively thinking that since I am innocent, ultimately justice will be served - meaning I would be safe and sound. But in the end, I was shocked when told that I would be charged for violating the US "Anti-Corruption Act" and conspiring to launder money and 10 other counts ! If the lawsuit is established, I will face a total of 125 years in prison. It was at that time that I finally realized that the target and goal of the United States was not actually me, but Alstom. The Americans did this so that they could break up Alstom and achieve its long held desire to forcibly take over France’s most valuable company - Alstom.

    In the days when I was imprisoned by the United States, I always paid attention to the development of the situation. I always believed that business competition should have an ethical bottom line; that no one can be allowed to trample upon the established business rules and principles arbitrarily - let alone when they are supposed to be world leaders! However, the ensuing events completely shattered my naive innocence.

    To Page 2

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  7. Page 2

    On April 23, 2014, in order to force Alstom to succumb, our company's vice president of Asia, Lawrence Hawkins was arrested by the US Government. The next day, Alstom President Berkeley was himself under similar strong arm pressure and forced to announce that he was planning to sell his “pearl on the palm” energy business (70% of its business volume) to General Electric for a mere $13 billion.
    Alstom was supposed to receive more than USD10 billion from the sale. However, after paying taxes, JV fees, capital injection, shareholder dividends and debt repayments, what the company ultimately received was close to zero.
    With its almighty petro dollar and it’s technical strength, the United States successfully applied a set of diabolical guidelines against other allies and their businesses on many issues of common concern. It centres upon the arbitrary arrest of senior executives of competitors through the use of courts and laws under its jurisdiction, and finally force the executives of its competitors to succumb under pressure to the acquisition of the rival company. The US Government has used this devious method to perfection. Within ten years, General Electric has acquired at least four companies through this method. Alstom is the fifth.

    Alstom is likened to our “Huawei” in France, but Alstom was crushed by the United States and finally acquired.

    In recent years, the Chinese Huawei company is also facing the same situation as ours. All using the same tactics, although China’s Huawei is the top enterprise in the field of 5G technology and Alstom is the pearl of the French industry.

    At that time, at least 4 senior executives of Alstom were arrested. Today you witnessed the arrest of the daughter of Huawei’s founder Mr. Ren Zhengfei, Ms. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO.

    The US Department of Justice is not independent, but is under the influence and control of powerful American multinational companies. The relevant US laws can be called a tool for extortion.

    Since 2010, French companies and banks alone have paid US$14 billion in fines to the US. From the moral of two of the Alcatel oil industry in the communications industry to Industrial Bank.

    When I heard China’s Ms. Meng Wanzhou from Huawei being arrested in Canada, I felt that I should tell the world what I knew, especially Huawei, which reminded me of Alstom. I hope they will not repeat Alstom’s mistake.

    At the beginning of 2019, the book "The American Trap" co-authored by a French journalist and I was published in France, it caused a huge response. This book is my personal experience and it reveals in detail the inside story of the US government's covet tactics of devouring US corporate competitors.
    I sincerely hope that our Chinese friends can have a read of my book and make necessary preparations to prevent it from happening. I wish Ms. Meng Wanzhou will be able return to her country as soon as possible, and hope that Huawei can overcome its difficulties. “This is extortion and a complete blackmail."

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