Meng loses first hurdle of extradition case on ‘double-criminality’ argument

Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, currently in Vancouver fighting US extradition attempts for alleged fraud and sanctions evasion, has suffered a blow as the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled, 27 May, that the test for ‘double-criminality’ has been met, and that the case can continue.

Meng is charged with having made fraudulent representations to HSBC regarding Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, a company it wholly owned and which is alleged to have breached US sanctions against Iran.

As presiding judge Chief Justice Holmes noted in his ruling, Meng’s lawyers had argued that her alleged conduct could not have amounted to fraud in Canada because ‘it relates entirely to the effects of economic sanctions against Iran, and at the relevant time Canada had no such sanctions (just as it has none now.)’

In the ruling, the judge analyses the case law around the concept of ‘double-criminality’ in some detail, but finds that ‘[T]he essence of the alleged wrongful concept in this case is the making of intentionally false statements in the banker client relationship that put HSBC at risk. The US sanctions are part of the state of affairs necessary to explain how HSBC was at risk, but they are not themselves an intrinsic part of the conduct.

‘Ms. Meng’s approach to the double criminality analysis would seriously limit Canada’s ability to fulfil its international obligations in the extradition context for fraud and other economic crimes. [For the principle to be applied in the manner she suggests] would give fraud an artificially narrow scope in the extradition context.’

As to the argument put forward by her lawyers that extradition might ‘indirectly help to enforce laws based on policy offensive to Canadian values’, the judge said, inter alia, ‘[E]conomic sanctions laws such as were in place in the US at the time…are not part of Canadian law but they are also not fundamentally contrary to Canadian values in the way that slavery laws would be, for example.’

Meng, who faces up to 30 years in prison in the US if extradited and found guilty of US prosecutors’ charges, is currently under house arrest in Vancouver.

The case citation is: United States v. Meng – 2020 BCSC 785.