Huawei CFO Meng Loses Key Court Argument in Fight Against Extradition To United States (reuters.com) 96
Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou has lost a key aspect of the trial on her extradition to the United States, a Canadian court announced on Wednesday. From a report: Meng, a Chinese citizen, was arrested in December 2018 on a warrant issued by U.S. authorities, who accuse her of bank fraud and misleading HSBC about a Huawei-owned company's dealings with Iran, thereby breaking U.S. sanctions on Tehran. Meng's lawyers argued that the case should be thrown out because the alleged offences were not a crime in Canada. But British Columbia's Superior Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes disagreed, ruling the legal standard of double criminality had been met. "Ms. Meng's approach ... would seriously limit Canada's ability to fulfill its international obligations in the extradition context for fraud and other economic crimes," Holmes said.
Trump set Canada up here (Score:3)
time for the Great Hoser wall going and get some nukes ready. No one fucks with you when you got some nukes.
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Yes, but they should stop asking nicely whether it's convenient for the recepient to deliver them now.
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Not at all. Canada does not have nukes. For nukes you have to have a delivery method. We don't have a delivery method. No ICBMs, no cruise missiles, not even the launch capability for cruise missiles. If Canada had nukes we would make them known to the world because they are a bargaining chip.
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You're part of NORAD anyway, in a nuclear war the Canadians would be right there in the control room with the US launching them.
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You use the past tense, but the Canadian staff are still right there in Colorado. :)
US and Canadian pilots still challenge Russian bombers together.
I don't think it matters which country the missiles are based in; it is the same nuclear umbrella that we're both under.
Hopefully Canada will be willing to host lots of missile defense interceptor sites in the future as that technology matures. It seems a better option than burning the world down as the first line of defense.
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> For nukes you have to have a delivery method. We don't have a delivery method.
If we needed a nuclear deterrent against the US we could just threaten to drive one over the border in a pickup. Lotsa targets within a 30 minute drive of the 49th parallel.
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Canada is a member of NATO, which means the US has been managing and paying for its defense which includes nuclear missiles.
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Canada is a member of NATO, which means the US has applied extreme pressure against Canada having much in the way of armed forces as well as the US needing Canadian talent to implement the German design to land on the Moon. See the Avro Arrow, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] for an example of what America hated about Canada's military.
Of course, America being America, after pressuring Canada to not have a military, they bitch that Canada doesn't have a military and forget that Canadian engineering got the
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Canada is a member of NATO, which means the US has applied extreme pressure against Canada having much in the way of armed forces
Did your mother have any children who lived?
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Sorry no. We've been defending ourselves just fine since 1812.
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Right. The RCAF Hornets can only carry 3-4 nuclear bombs each.
If you don't need precision targeting, the rest of the RCAF fixed wing aircraft can only carry between one and a couple of dozen each. I'm not sure I mind missing by half a mile with a 1.2 megaton nuke.
Air Canada has plenty of aircraft capable of delivering a nuclear weapon too. There's precedent for refitting civilian aircraft:
https://nationalinterest.org/b... [nationalinterest.org]
Then there's the Navy, container ships, etc. Sure, they can only nuclear weapons to por
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Canada does not have nuclear weapons. CANDU reactors were designed to run on unenriched uranium; a side-effect is you don't need enrichment facilities and therefore don't need facilities that could produce weapons-grade uranium.
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Canada, India agree to $350-million uranium supply deal [theglobeandmail.com]
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We had lots of enriched uranium until the last government gave it to America.
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No, not really. Any country that developed its own nuclear power stations and nuclear research facilities can be safely assumed to be capable of developing nukes if they wanted to. But they couldn't hide it; it would require activities that could not be kept hidden or disguised as having another purpose, most notably the refining of nuclear materials (nukes require fissionables refined to a much higher degree than power reactors). Israel is a good case in point. Israel has kept its nuclear activities un
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> but everyone still knows they have nukes, even though they have never admitted it.
You miss the point there. In Israel's case everyone knowing about them without them officially admitting their existence is a feature, not a bug. It's a deterrent.
In the case of Canada, we'd want them to be a complete stone-cold surprise.
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Just have to do what S. Africa (likely with Israel) did, test in the Southern Ocean when no satellites are overhead.
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Trump doesn't have the brains to set anyone up, he's incapable of calculating secondary effects of anything he does. His reasoning was more along the lines of: Huawei is Chinese and cleaning up on 5G, I want American companies to clean up on 5G, I know, I'll steal one Huawei's execs, that'll learn them. The depth of his thinking is ever only the thin depth of a piece of paper.
This is just another one of his screwups. The Canadians should never have listened to him and told him to steal a Huawei exec himsel
Re: Trump set Canada up here (Score:2)
This is just another one of his screwups.
This is chess, she's a pawn* and you are a blithering idiot**
*Sucks to be a pawn; should've stayed off the board.
**Likely even more so than our hapless goombah of a prez
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Canada has an extradition treaty with the US, and we tend to take our treaty obligations seriously. The screwup happened when somebody didn't send a quiet message to China that Meng should rebook her flight.
No, the Canadians being held in China haven't been released.
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It is just astounding to me that China thinks Canadian courts are political venues.
They need to have a valid legal argument to have a valid legal argument. It doesn't seem like it would be hard to understand.
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I'm not sure it's astonishing. I like to think Canada's system is among the best, but it certainly isn't immune to political tampering. We have a deferred prosecution law after all. And that particular law was at the centre of a fairly big scandal involving political interference in the justice system pretty much at the same time Meng was arrested. It was hysterical watching our prime minister insist to the Chinese that he could not interfere with the rule of law at the same time as the ethics commissioner
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I don't doubt Canada has local political tampering, being a system composed of humans. But it is considered to be a very high quality system, and why would individual local actors be so easy to tamper with? To tamper with something, you have to be connected to it; you have to have influence over something that matters to the person you're tampering with. A US President might be able to put pressure on the Prime Minister, but putting pressure on a Judge would be very, very difficult. And it would seem to be
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Meng's double criminality defence wasn't frivolous, and many observers expected a ruling in her favour. https://vancouversun.com/news/... [vancouversun.com]
If Meng were some random person who'd committed regular fraud then extradition would be a formality, but she's not. She's accused of something that's tied up with American enforcement of secondary sanctions, which are pretty alarming in themselves, for a company that has been specifically targeted by American authorities as a part of an ongoing propaganda and trade war wit
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False.
Lots of people whose job is to talk recognized which side supported their politics.
And for example, they quote a lawyer
Meng Wanzhou’s arguments on the issue of “double criminality” are not “frivolous” or a “longshot,” says a lawyer familiar with Canadian extradition law.
Why the weird quoting? Why aren't the lawyer's actual words used, and why are there three separate words quoted? It means that lawyer did not actually say that it is a reasonable argument. They probably gave a statement that said how stupid of an argument it was, but then explained that it wasn't these specific words, in their legal meaning. The point is merely that the argument is n
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You seem very determined to support a particular scenario so I don't think any evidence or further discussion is likely to change that.
If you are Canadian... (Score:4, Insightful)
... then China would be a great country not to visit right about now. They'll probably kidnap a couple more Canadian citizens in a CPC fit of pique.
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What do you mean "right now?" It's been shit to visit China as a Canadian for over two years and change. Our governments 'soft power' evaporated when Trudeau was elected and has gotten worse over the last several years. And it doesn't help our governments focus isn't on our citizens, but on a temporary security council seat.
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Our governments 'soft power' evaporated when Trudeau was elected and has gotten worse over the last several years.
Why? What beef does China have with Trudeau?
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Hey dumbass. Someone was letting China buy anything and everything long before Trudeau was elected.
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They're only a big economy on paper. Economists have agreed for decades their numbers are mostly made up, they will even admit themselves that they are approved by committees. In reality they are a growing economy but most of their citizens still live in abject poverty. Kind of like India, but with a government that's a lot worse.
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They're only a big economy on paper.
They are only the biggest economy on the plantet. [worldbank.org]
They have a lot of people though so they aren't a rich country by any stretch.
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... then China would be a great country not to visit right about now. They'll probably kidnap a couple more Canadian citizens in a CPC fit of pique.
China has shown how weak it is. It has been retaliating against Canada in this case even though it was the US that wants her extradited. They dare not do anything against the US. Fuck you China, you're weak and have lost face!
Kill the Canadian to scare the American (Score:2)
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OK, but go and try it with a real monkey and see if it even works. The monkey still doesn't do what you say. But it might learn to kill chickens.
It is just something a stupid father says to try to prove to his kids that he is right.
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I don't think it needs to work, just be memorable.
To be a saying, sure.
But to be a legal strategy? No, the goal is only for it work. Memorable is not helpful.
Political strategy? No, if being memorable is good or bad is determined entirely by if it actually worked. If it doesn't work, the memory of it should lead you to not do it again. That is a poor goal for a strategy, because you can achieve even more by not doing it the first time!
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I'm going to suggest we should distinguish between the saying, which is the thing that one wants to remember, and the actual strategy, what one wants to do.
With the frog, the saying reminds you do do things slowly, which can be a good legal and political strategy. Saying "move fast and break things" is a good way to remember its opposite, which may not include actually breaking things if you use it as a legal or political strategy.
Killing random Canadians in China, and even imprisoning them works. It s
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Killing random Canadians in China, and even imprisoning them works. It send a message to other round-eyes to remember that, even if they're a retired diplomat (Michael Kovrig) or the director of a cultural exchange group (Michael Spavor), they can be arrested on arbitrary grounds and imprisoned without consular access for however long the government wants.
That is just incredibly moronic. Imagine you're the Judge. The argument is that, because people from your country are treated lawlessly by the government of the nation that some person before you is from, you should therefore become lawless yourself, and give deference to people from that nation, and allow them to live above the law in Canada. It is very stupid.
Why you do believe that frightening individual Americans visiting China somehow helps this woman stuck in Canada? Or helps the Chinese government to
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I'm sorry, but that's just a sequence of non-sequiturs. I was hoping for a spirited argument!
plonk.
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I was hoping for a spirited argument!
I think we both know "plonk" was your best attempt.
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Fraud case (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm actually just glad to hear that there is a Canadian law that she would have broken had she done there what she's alleged to have done.
It's a bit like Assange in the UK. I don't want us to hand him over to the US because they asked, I want us to hand him over only if he's done something for which he could face prosecution in the UK if he did it here.
Then, like McKinnon, if he did it while in the UK then I want him prosecuted in the UK, not handed over to a corrupt justice system abroad.
Where was Meng whe
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Or maybe Xi Xinping's crackdown on high-level fraud and embezzlement is a component
Surely this just means that he would support the US prosecuting someone for fraud?
It certainly doesn't explain why his Government took hostage two Canadians in retaliation for Meng's arrest. Sounds like Winnie the Flu sanctions her alleged fraud.
the bank involved is tied to England's decaying hold on HongKong. Which is a good thing. HongKong's inflation is not hyper, but it feels like that to native islanders under British dominated banking.
What the fuck are you on?
England has no hold on Hong Kong, the British have commitments to Hong Kong for which people in Hong Kong are thankful.
One of the biggest banks in the UK is called HSBC. The H in that name is for 'Hong Kong', their head office is on the Nort
very conflicted about this (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, I'm extremely conflicted about this case. One one hand, the law is supposed to treat everyone equally. I understand we have a long, complicated history with Iran, but at the moment we're trying very hard to strangle their economy and we've coded that into US laws. We can discuss if it's right or wrong, but if you want to do business with us on our turf, you follow our laws. This cuts both ways. Whenever I'm on China's turf, I follow Chinese laws or I face the consequences. She doesn't get a pass because she's the daughter of an important executive.
On the other hand, plenty of countries, companies and individuals are trying to circumvent the US embargo of Iran. Why is this person getting the hammer so badly? Could it be because she's the daughter of a Huawei executive, and the US has decided to use Huawei as an example in their current brawl with China? It almost feels like we've taken a hostage here. This stinks to high heaven. North Korea takes hostages. Iranian fundamentalist and communist rebel groups take hostages. We're supposed to be better than that. Sadly, I can't say I'm surprised given the current leadership in the executive branch. That group of people never miss an opportunity to hit below the belt.
The US is within it's rights here, but it stinks.
No, what she did is also illegal in Canada (Score:4, Informative)
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Yep. AND that's the stupidest part of extradition. It was not the Canadian judicial system that wanted her it was the US judicial system. Proving her guilt or innocence should be fully up to US courts, not Canadian. We should have taken her straight to the border the day she was arrested and have been done with her.
Things weren't really bad with China until Trump opened his fat mouth and threw us under the bus by saying he would use her as a pawn in negotiations with China.
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Things have always been bad with China you just haven't been paying attention.
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The Canadian courts are not proving her innocence or guilt in the matter, only determining if a) what she did is accused of is against canadian law, and b) if there is sufficient evidence that a trial would be held in Canada for the same crime.
Re: No, what she did is also illegal in Canada (Score:2)
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It's pretty common actually. Many extradition treaties require that the crime, if not committed in the requesting country, be a serious crime in that country as well.
Otherwise people would be getting extradited for things that are legal where they live but no somewhere else, like revealing secrets they are not obliged to keep or even following their own local laws. As an example Microsoft employees in Ireland could not comply with orders from a US court due to Irish law.
One of the biggest criticisms of the
False. (Score:2)
What moron lawyer tried that argument? The whole point of an extradition treaty is that a country honors extraditions due to breaking a DIFFERENT country's laws.
That's not true at all. The vast majority of extradition treaties will only ever allow extradition if the law which was broken in the target country is also a law in the arresting country. It is literally the first default argument used in every extradition case and quite often it is completely valid. In this case the entire reason extradition *is* allowed to go ahead is because she *would have* broken Canadian laws as well since the claim of fraud was determined to also be illegal in Canada.
Just like it tu
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"Because she got caught. The US embargo applies only to the USA."
No, the US sanctions apply as widely as they can possibly make them. Specifically, they apply to any company who does business with the US or has assets in the US. The EU was considering passing a law requiring EU companies to disregard the US sanctions.
Meng is accused of lying to an executive of a British bank about her Chinese company's dealings with Iran, during a meeting in Hong Kong.
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No, the US sanctions apply as widely as they can possibly make them.
Indeed they do. But the USA can't make them any wider than the USA. I'm free to do business with Iran all I want. The USA can go fuck itself. But in that case I would be quite stupid to use USA based bank to transfer money from the USA and then lie to the bank about the purpose of that money.
So very much the embargo applies only to the USA. I actually work in a position that potentially puts me in a position to work with Iran so I get quarterly legal briefings and training on export controls and sanctions a
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Well, Huawei used a UK based bank, so there's that. The US has been steadily extending the reach of "secondary sanctions." Sure, they can't impose them on people and organizations who have no contact with the US at all (unless they ask the CIA to help out), but many companies over a certain size do have business with the US. Or employees who like to visit occasionally. Or, as the US Office of Foreign Assets Control has apparently claimed, conducting transactions in US dollars.
https://www.williamsmullen.com [williamsmullen.com]
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Just like every cop tells everybody who complains about being the one to get pulled over; "When you go fishing, do you catch every fish in the lake? Neither do I."
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Would you like to see the US extradite French citizens to Saudi Arabia for having extramarital sex while on holiday in Greece?
Extradition treaties are for crimes that would be crimes anywhere. Canada should not be part of enforcing other countries draconian laws.
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I didn't realize that bank fraud - the crime she is accused of - is draconian.
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Wow, if bank fraud is legal in China that explains why the banking center is in Hong Kong!
***ROFLCOPTER***
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Most companies have various shell companies that they funnel money through to avoid any restrictions. Proving that any executive or company had any hand in the transfer is extremely hard. Cisco and Microsoft both are very well known to get their products into Iran through a laundry list of subsidiaries and underhanded agreements which aren't illegal per se, but have the same effect as the tax avoidance schemes.
Huawei hasn't really cared and doesn't really hide their dealings because they are part of the Chi
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So, no. Not always. In general, the US will not extradite someone for speech crimes. At all. Ever. Our 1st Amendment is as close to sacrosanct as any part of our legal code has ever been. It has caused us a world of problems, but it has also protected us from more. Is it possible to regulate speech without corruption? Probably. But is it probable to do so without corruption? Long term almost definitely not.
The Bill of Rights, flawed as it may be, is our last line of defense against utter tyranny. Given how
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Trump's declarations will set her free (Score:5, Interesting)
Once the extradition proceedings start, all her legal team has to do is claim that she can't be extradited to the US because there's a reasonable doubt that she'll get a fair trial, which is one of the reasons in the extradition treaty to refuse extradition.
Why ? Because of one of Trump's statement that he made to a journalist during an interview soon after Meng's arrest. He declared that once she'd be in US custody, he would have no problem using her as a bargaining chip against China.
When the President of the United States declares publicly, on television, that the executive branch would gladly interferere with the judiciary, what more do you need to demonstrate to a judge that your client runs a significant risk of not getting a fair trial if extradited ?
Once again, Trump couldn't keep his fucking mouth shut, and with this declaration that he made one and a half years ago, he just bought Meng her ticket home.
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Canada isn't going to declare that the US Courts can't give a fair trial, that's completely absurd. They are our (the US) closest ally, biggest trade partner, and we cooperate on issues like this all the time. Going back, gee. Golly. A long time.
In the Olden Times, when I was a kid, before anybody understood exchange rates, lots of stores used to accept Canadian currency.
Trump is not a lawyer, so there is 0% chance he will be trying the case, so that would be a pretty exceptionally weak argument. And you're
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Re:Do you think Canada will care? (Score:2)
Everyone knows this is a political show and they are using this lady as a hostage. Everyone with even a bit of objective reasoning skills, that is.
The point is, Canada of course knows this and they know she will never get a fair trial. She will likely never get any trial. Maybe they will send her to some black site.
Canada, while may care deep down morally, they will still do whatever the US tells them to do. Just like every other country who relies on trade with the US. They will give in to what ever bully
Not a crime? (Score:2)
who accuse her of bank fraud and misleading HSBC about a Huawei-owned company's dealings with Iran, thereby breaking U.S. sanctions on Tehran. Meng's lawyers argued that the case should be thrown out because the alleged offences were not a crime in Canada.
Bank fraud is not a crime in Canada?
Canada rescued US citizens from Iran (Score:2)
Extradition of potential criminals (Score:1)