Huawei Technologies Ltd’s chief financial officer is seeking bank records from HSBC Holdings Plc in a bid to prove she didn’t trick lenders into processing transactions that violated US sanctions targeting Iran.
Meng Wanzhou, who’s fighting extradition to the US from Canada, asked London’s High Court to grant an order to obtain the records, which she says will show what the bank knew about Huawei’s ties to Iran-linked company Skycom that sparked the extradition request.
The 48-year-old Chinese executive was arrested in Canada on a US handover request in December 2018 and later released on C$10mn bail ($7.9mn). US authorities are seeking Meng, the eldest daughter of Huawei’s billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei, to face fraud charges, alleging that she misled banks into handling transactions that violated American sanctions.
At the heart of the case lies a Powerpoint presentation Meng gave to HSBC in Hong Kong in 2013. Meng says the presentation made clear that Skycom was a business partner of Huawei and worked with the firm in sales and services in Iran, her lawyer James Lewis said in a court filing made public yesterday.
US prosecutors and HSBC contest this. They say the presentation was misleading because Meng failed to state that Huawei controlled Skycom’s operations in Iran. The US alleges that because of this, HSBC continued to provide banking services to Huawei, including clearing US dollar transactions related to Skycom’s commerce in Iran, Lewis said.
Meng’s alleged deceit is said to have placed HSBC’s economic interests at risk, by exposing it to the potential violation of US sanctions, he said. Meng denies any wrongdoing.
A spokesman for HSBC said the disclosure application is without merit. The bank is not a party to the criminal case in the US or the Canadian extradition proceedings, he said.
The bank’s lawyer Rupert Allen argued at Friday’s hearing that Meng has no jurisdiction in London to bring the disclosure application.
If the court were to grant Meng’s request, it would “impose an enormous burden on banks in giving disclosures” and likely cause “a huge flood in disclosure applications,” Allen said.
A spokeswoman for Huawei declined to comment. Meng’s extradition proceedings are due to start in March.
She hopes to use the bank’s records in “in support of her abuse of process and evidential sufficiency arguments in the extradition proceedings,” Lewis said.