A Canadian judge on Friday denied Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou's application to add a trove of documents her legal team received from HSBC as evidence to her U.S. extradition case.
Meng, 49, is facing extradition from Canada to the United States on charges of bank fraud for allegedly misleading British Bank HSBC about Huawei's business dealings in Iran, potentially causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions. She has been held under house arrest in Vancouver since December 2018, when she was first detained.
Her legal team received over 300 pages of internal documents from HSBC through a court in Hong Kong, China, which the defense argued should be entered as evidence because they would disprove the basis for the United States' extradition claim.
The legal team said those documents showed at least two senior HSBC leaders were aware of relations between Huawei and Skycom, which Huawei describes as a separate local business partner in Iran. They are meant to counter U.S. charges that only junior employees of the British bank knew about the relations between Huawei and Skycom.
"We respect the court's ruling, but regret this outcome," Huawei Canada said in a statement released after the ruling, insisting that the documents showed HSBC was aware of Huawei's business dealings in Iran, proving that the United States' account of the case was "manifestly unreliable."
Meng is set to appear in court in early August. Her extradition hearings are scheduled to finish by the end of that month.
