Huawei exec loses key court ruling

Decision means more arguments will be heard in Meng extradition case

VANCOUVER—A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled against a Huawei executive wanted on fraud charges in the United States.

Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes says in a decision released Wednesday that the allegations against Meng Wanzhou could constitute a crime in Canada.

“On the question of law posed, I conclude that, as a matter of law, the double criminality requirement for extradition is capable of being met in this case,” she says in the written judgment.

The ruling means the court will continue to hear other arguments in the extradition case, including whether Meng’s arrest at the Vancouver airport in December 2018 was unlawful.

It also means Meng, 48, will not be permitted to return to China and must remain in Canada.

The allegations against Meng, who is Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, date back to 2013.

She is accused of making false statements to HSBC, significantly understating Huawei’s relationship with Skycom Tech Co., and putting the bank at risk of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Meng and Huawei have denied all the allegations levelled against them.

In January, Holmes heard arguments in the case related to the issue of so-called double criminality, or whether the alleged crime would have also been considered criminal if it took place in Canada.

Her lawyers argued that the conduct could not have amounted to fraud in Canada because it relates entirely to the effects of U.S. economic sanctions against Iran. At the time, Canada had no such sanctions, just as it has none now, they said.

The Attorney General of Canada told the court that the fraud allegations could be argued without reference to U.S. sanctions.

In her decision, Holmes says the allegations do depend on the effects of U.S. sanctions, but that’s not enough to dismiss the case.

“I conclude that those effects may play a part in the determination of whether double criminality is established,” she said.

While she found the U.S. sanctions are not an “intrinsic” part of the alleged conduct, they explain how HSBC was at risk of violating them.

“For this reason, I cannot agree with Ms. Meng that to refer to U.S. sanctions in order to understand the risk to HSBC is to allow the essence of the conduct to be defined by foreign law. Canada’s laws determine whether the alleged conduct, in its essence, amounts to fraud.”

WASHINGTON—Gathering the leaders of seven of the world’s largest economies in person would be “much more effective” than the virtual alternative, Justin Trudeau said Wednesday — so long as the United States has a plan to deal with the potential COVID-19 risk.

The notion of G7 leaders attending a physical meeting somewhere between the White House and Camp David, even in the midst of a global pandemic that continues to batter the national capital, began last week as another outlandish sentiment from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed.

But an in-person meeting in late June now seems a real possibility — one the prime minister said he’s prepared to entertain, as long as the Trump administration takes the necessary steps to ensure public health concerns are properly addressed.

“There are significant health preoccupations that we have around holding an in-person meeting, but there’s no question that in-person meetings, in an ideal situation, are much more effective than even virtual meetings,” Trudeau said.

“However, there are many questions to answer before we can commit to showing up in person, and those discussions are happening in an ongoing and very constructive way.”

Trudeau spoke from outside his home at Rideau Cottage, where he has been modelling stay-at-home behaviour for nearly three months, ever since his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau tested positive for the coronavirus back in March.

His U.S. counterpart, meanwhile, has been aggressively urging states to allow people to get back to work and jump-start the stalled U.S. economy. Going ahead with an in-person G7, he said, would send the signal that his country is ready to get back to business — a process Trump has christened America’s “transition to greatness.”

“The president thinks no greater example of reopening in this transition to greatness would be the G7 ... happening probably more towards the end of June,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday, adding that the same precautions that are taken at the White House would be in place for world leaders.

The meeting is expected to take place at either the White House, the Camp David presidential retreat north of Washington, or some combination of the two. Camp David was also the venue of choice in 2012, when the U.S. played host to what was then known as the G8.

That, however, was the U.S. president’s second choice. The original plan to host the meeting at the Trump-owned Doral golf resort in Miami was abandoned in October after just 48 hours of Democrats and Republicans alike complaining about the conflict-of-interest optics.

While the original meeting was slated for June 10-12 before the pandemic took hold, the new timeline likely involves a gathering closer to the end of June, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend.