Vancouver (AFP)

Lawyers for Huawei's chief financial officer approached the last phase of their client's extradition procedure in Vancouver on Monday by attacking the heart of the United States' accusations: they denied that she lied to HSBC about the activities of the Chinese group in Iran.

Meng Wanzhou, 49, was arrested at the end of 2018 at Vancouver airport at the request of the United States, which accuses her of having circumvented American sanctions against Iran and wants to try her for bank fraud.

Washington more specifically accuses Ms. Meng of lying to an HSBC bank executive, during a presentation she made in 2013 in Hong Kong, on the links between Huawei and a subsidiary called Skycom which sold telecoms equipment to Iran, exposing the bank to US sanctions.

The applicant has always denied these accusations.

From the first day of the hearing, Meng's lawyers claimed that HSBC "knew full well" in 2013 that Huawei owned Skycom and then controlled the company to which it had sold its shares in 2007, Canicula.

"The bank knew that Skycom had sold its shares to Canicula and the bank knew that Huawei controlled Canicula's bank account," assured one of them, Frank Addario.

According to him, the claims of the American justice according to which Ms. Meng sought to mislead her interlocutor by trying to "hide something about this relationship" between Skycom and Huawei, are "misleading and not trustworthy".

In support of its defense, Huawei attempted last month to gain access to internal HSBC documents, including a copy of Ms. Meng's presentation at the heart of the proceedings.

But a British court rejected the Chinese group's request in mid-February.

The representative of the Canadian public prosecutor, Robert Frater, for his part, rejected the arguments of the defense, considering that they were part of a criminal trial, where contradictory versions are presented, and not of a simple extradition procedure.

-Biden's support-

The defense is also expected to plead this week that former US President Donald Trump "poisoned" the proceedings by asserting at the end of 2018 that he would not hesitate to intervene in the case against Ms. Meng if it resulted in trade concessions of China.

Allegations that lawyers for the Attorney General of Canada had asked the judge to dismiss, arguing that these statements were made by "a president who is no longer in office, about a possible intervention which, in this case, no 'never happened ".

The case has sparked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between China and Canada, of which it is the second largest trading partner after the United States, and these hearings come at a particularly tense period between the two countries.

Last week, US President Joe Biden publicly supported Canada in demanding the release of two Canadians arrested in China ten days after Ms. Meng's arrest.

Two other Canadian initiatives have infuriated Beijing.

Ottawa launched in February a declaration signed by some 60 countries denouncing the arbitrary detentions of foreigners as a means of diplomatic pressure.

Canadian MPs also adopted a non-binding motion equating China's treatment of its Uyghur minority with "genocide", described as "malicious provocation" by Beijing.

A few days after Meng Wanzhou's arrest in Vancouver, where she has since lived under house arrest, former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and his compatriot, consultant Michael Spavor, were arrested in China and charged with espionage.

For Canada, supported by many Western countries, the two Canadians are detained in an "arbitrary" manner, in retaliation for the arrest of Ms. Meng, which Beijing denies.

The hearings, suspended on Tuesday, will resume on Wednesday and are due to end in mid-May.

In the event of an appeal, the proceedings could take several more years.

© 2021 AFP