U.S. judge dismisses indictment against Huawei executive

New York | Reuters — A U.S. judge on Friday dismissed an indictment against Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, formally ending a criminal sanctions case that strained U.S.-China and Canada-China relations.

Meng, whose father Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei and is the telecommunications company’s chief executive, entered an agreement with U.S. prosecutors last year for the case to be dismissed four years after her December 2018 arrest.

Prosecutors accused Meng of bank fraud and other crimes for misleading HSBC and other banks about Huawei’s relationship with a company that operated in Iran.

They said Meng’s actions put banks at risk of penalties for processing transactions that violated U.S. sanctions.

Huawei has pleaded not guilty to related U.S. criminal charges.

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn dismissed Meng’s indictment with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again.

A lawyer for Meng and a spokeswoman for Huawei did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meng spent nearly three years under house arrest in Canada following her arrest at a Vancouver airport.

She entered a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors in September 2021 in which she acknowledged having made false statements about Huawei’s Iran business.

On the day Donnelly approved that agreement, Meng flew home to Shenzhen.

Shortly afterward, China released two Canadians it had been holding, and two American siblings who had been prevented from leaving the country were allowed to fly home.

Chinese restrictions on imports of Canadian canola from two major Prairie grain firms — imposed several weeks after Meng’s arrest — were lifted about eight months after her departure from Canada.

In suspending the licenses for the two companies in March 2019, China said it had found quarantine pests in canola seed deliveries. The Canola Council of Canada noted at the time that no other export customers had made similar complaints.

Meng, 50, now serves as Huawei’s rotating chairwoman and deputy chairwoman, as well as CFO.

The United States still views Huawei as a national security threat.

On Nov. 25, the Biden administration banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from Huawei and China’s ZTE Corp. because they posed an “unacceptable risk” to national security.

— Reporting for Reuters by Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel in New York.