Sunday, December 9, 2018

DEEP DIVE: Behind The Arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou

Meng Wanzhou
China has summoned the Canadian ambassador to China to protest the detention of a top executive of leading Chinese tech giant Huawei, calling it “unreasonable, unconscionable, and vile in nature” and warning of “grave consequences” if she is not released, reports CP24.

A report by the official Xinhua News Agency carried on the Foreign Ministry's website said that Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng called in Ambassador John McCallum on Saturday over the holding of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the founder of the company.

Meng was transferring flights in Vancouver and detained at the request of the United States for fraud in connection with allegedly selling equipment (including some made by U.S.-based Hewlett Packard) to Iran, a violation of U.S. sanctions. She was en route to Mexico from Hong Kong.

As a multinational. Huawei has bank accounts in the U.S. and the violation is technically the result of reporting to U.S. banks that it does not do business with Iran.

The deals were done via a Hong Kong company, Skycom.

Canadian prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley at a bail hearing on Friday for Meng said that she had misled U.S.  banks into thinking that Huawei and Skycom were separate when, in fact, “Skycom was Huawei.” Meng has contended that Huawei sold Skycom in 2009.

At the hearing, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke ordered a continuance until Monday and Meng will remain in custody over the weekend. Gibb-Carsley told the judge that Meng has no meaningful connections to Canada and has vast resources and is a serious flight risk and should not be granted bail.

In the U.S., she's facing charges that could put her in prison for 30 years.

Meng had been avoiding the U.S. because of the potential for arrest.

The arrest in Canada was made on Dec 1, the same day that Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping of China agreed over dinner to a 90-day ceasefire in the trade war.

The official Xinhua news agency published an editorial on Sunday morning condemning the arrest as an “extremely nasty” act that had caused “serious damage to Sino-Canada relations”.

“According to the words of the Canadian leader, he had known of the action in advance,” Xinhua said, referring to the fact that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – whom it did not name directly – had a few days’ notice of the arrest.

“But he didn’t notify the Chinese side. Instead, he let this kind of nasty thing to happen and assisted the U.S.  side’s unilateral hegemonic behavior – this has hurt the feeling of Chinese people,” Xinhua added.

It's obvious that Trudeau is now President Trump's poodle pit bull.

Though it is not clear that Trump is in charge of the leash on the other side of this mad and serious escapade. There are obviously U.S. deep state actors very close to the action who appear to desire confrontation with every country, especially China, at every turn rather than peace, civility and trade.

But, in the end, the blame must fall to the intellectual light-weight Trump, who after all is president but who has an extremely limited grasp of the broader world and is incapable of thinking three steps out when it comes to geopolitics, realpolitik or an understanding of the sick bastards that he has surrounded himself with.

The best thing that could happen is for Judge Ehrcke to grant Meng bail and that she then finds a way to get out of Canada. If she is extradited to the U.S., things will escalate dramatically---all because a Chinese company conducted peaceful trade with Iran against the wishes of the Empire.

-RW 



3 comments:

  1. the last three paragraphs says it all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fire the Freak Pompeo and the Rat Bolton

    ReplyDelete
  3. --- It's obvious that Trudeau is now President Trump's ... pit bull. ---

    Well, the female version at most.

    ReplyDelete