Huawei CFO loses key part of US extradition case in Canada court

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou has lost a key aspect of the trial on her extradition to the United States, a Canadian court announced on Wednesday.

The judge sided with the Canadian prosecutors in ruling that the legal standard of double criminality had been met, meaning the US charges against Meng are also crimes in Canada.

The ruling paves the way for the extradition hearing to proceed to the second phase starting June.

Meng, 48, was arrested in Vancouver in December 2018 at the request of the US. The US charged her with bank fraud and misleading HSBC about a Huawei-owned company’s dealings with Iran.

Meng has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition. Huawei’s legal team argued in January that since the sanctions against Iran did not exist in Canada at the time of her arrest, Meng’s actions were not a crime in Canada. Prosecutors representing the Canadian government countered that the lie itself was the fraud, regardless of the existence of sanctions.

The case has strained relations between Ottawa and Beijing.