Huawei takes HSBC to court as it tries to stop extradition
The Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is bringing the bank HSBC to court in the UK. On a US appeal over suspicions Meng Wanzhou misled HSBC in a 2013 conference and was arrested in Canada.
As part of its effort to avoid the extradition of its chief financial officer from Canada to the US, the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is bringing the bank HSBC to court in the UK.On a US appeal over suspicions Meng Wanzhou misled HSBC in a 2013 conference and was arrested in Canada. Huawei is now trying to obtain access to information from HSBC that could help weaken the US case for her extradition. The bank told the BBC the application for disclosure was "without merit" The step comes in the midst of political pressure on HSBC, which was established in Hong Kong but is headquartered in the UK, where it makes a lot of its income.
The court hearing on Friday in London pulls the bank deeper into a legal dispute between Canada and China that has raised tensions. On 1 December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, who is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, was arrested at Vancouver airport because the US wants her to face trial on charges including fraud. These are linked to the suspected breach of US sanctions, charges she denies, against Iran. A meeting on 22 August 2013 between Ms Meng and HSBC is key to the allegations. In the previous months, Reuters news reports had raised concerns about whether Hong Kong-based company Skycom had breached trade sanctions against Iran.
The question was whether Skycom, a supplier of telecommunications equipment, was actually Huawei's business partner — or a cover for it to hide its activities in Iran. The US argues that Ms. Meng misled HSBC at the meeting about the true nature of Huawei's relationship with Skycom, which, in turn, placed the bank at risk of breaching sanctions against Iran. But she was arrested more than five years after the conference. To try to stop extradition, her Canadian lawyers have followed a multi-pronged strategy. One factor involved alleging that the US omitted key data on two slides that revealed that HSBC was not really kept in the dark about the true nature of the relationship between Skycom and Huawei, and she was transparent about it. Currently, under the Bankers Book Evidence Act, her lawyers have made an application to the UK high court to access relevant information held in the books of HSBC. They are seeking a court order under this Act to obtain access to HSBC documentation.
