Saga of Huawei executive’s case nears final end

NEW YORK — US prosecutors on Thursday asked a judge to dismiss bank fraud and other charges against Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies whose 2018 arrest strained relations between the United States and China.

Meng struck a deal with the prosecutors last year for the charges against her to be dismissed on Dec 1, 2022, four years from the date of her arrest in Canada on a US warrant. She flew to China from Canada on Sept 24, 2021, the day she struck the deal.

With no information Meng violated the deal, “the government respectfully moves to dismiss the third superseding indictment in this case as to defendant Wanzhou Meng,” Brooklyn US Attorney Carolyn Pokorny wrote in a Dec 1 letter to US District Judge Ann Donnelly.

Huawei, a telecommunications equipment maker the US views as a so-called national security threat, is still charged in the case, which is pending in US District Court in Brooklyn, New York. No trial date has yet been set, and a status conference is scheduled for Feb 7.

While Thursday’s move was expected, it closes a chapter on a particularly fraught phase of US-China relations that also thrust Canada into the middle of a broader clash between the two leading economies.

The charges against Huawei include everything from bank fraud to sanctions busting to conspiracy to steal trade secrets from US technology companies and obstructing justice. It has pleaded not guilty.

Huawei has stressed that it has worked with its partner networks for the last 20 years and been subject to a high level of scrutiny with regard to security, and nothing malicious has ever been found. But it seems that is not enough to win it a stay of execution in the markets of the US and its allies where the anti-China hawks now hold sway.

In the wake of its alleged activities, Huawei was added to a so-called US trade blacklist, restricting US suppliers from doing business with the company.

The US also waged a global campaign against Huawei. Late last month, the US Federal Communications Commission adopted final rules banning new telecommunications equipment from Huawei.