VANCOUVER: Extraditing Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou to the US based on American sanctions against Iran would set a dangerous precedent and could even undermine Canada’s policy towards Iran, Meng’s lawyers argued in court documents.
Meng, 47, was arrested at the Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2018, at the request of the US where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading the bank HSBC about Huawei Technologies’ business in Iran. Meng has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition.
Canada’s attorney general said in submissions released last week that Meng was being extradited because she fraudulently mislead HSBC, and that US sanctions should be taken into account as contributing to the legal environment in which the fraud took place - not as a reason for the extradition.
Meng’s team called the attorney general’s argument “circular,” arguing that because prosecutors relied on US sanctions to establish a risk of economic deprivation in both countries, “American law becomes Canadian law. Double criminality becomes single criminality.”
They wrote that allowing the attorney general to use US sanctions as a reason to extradite set a dangerous precedent, because it would “interfere with the (Canadian) government’s prerogative in foreign affairs ... In a democratic society, important public policy choices are best made in the elected legislative assembly rather than by judicial actors.” — Reuters
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