A US judge on Friday (2nd) formally withdrew the charges against Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, and ruled that no further charges could be filed, bringing the criminal case which has put a strain on the relationship between the United States and China.
Meng Wanzhou, 50, Huawei’s rotating chairman, vice chairman and chief financial officer, was arrested in December 2018 while changing planes in Canada and faced charges including bank fraud Prosecutors accused Meng Wanzhou of Huawei’s Iran business The website is suspected of misleading several banks, putting the latter at risk of being punished for violating US sanctions.
Meng Wanzhou reached a deferred prosecution agreement with US prosecutors last year. The US Department of Justice agreed that as long as Meng Wanzhou abides by the terms of the agreement, the charges against her will be dropped on December 1, 2022.
Prosecutor Carolyn Pokorny of Brooklyn, New York, wrote to Magistrate Ann Donnelly on Thursday (1st) that Meng Wanzhou would ask the court to withdraw the charges against her because she was not in breach of the agreement.
After Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada in 2018, the United States filed an extradition request to Canada the following year, but Meng Wanzhou remained in Canada until she was released last year. Shortly after her release, the Chinese government released two Canadian citizens who had been detained for more than 1,000 days, and a pair of Chinese-American siblings who had been banned from leaving the country for three years.
Although the US court ruling ended nearly three years of legal battles, the US still considers Huawei a national security threat. Last week, it imposed a ban on the sale of new equipment from Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei and ZTE.
