Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's Lawyers Accuse Trump Of Using Her As A Bargaining Chip In Trade Dispute

The mystery around Meng Wanzhou’s battle against extradition to the United States intensifies. Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei Technologies, was arrested at the Vancouver International airport in December 2018 after being slapped with a warrant on the charges of bank fraud.

Wanzhou’s lawyers have now sought for stays in the proceedings for her extradition to the U.S., at a Canadian court, after Wanzhou cited abuse of process by the American government.

“These proceedings have been poisoned. They can no longer be reasonably regarded as fair, regardless of the undoubted good faith of the court,” said Wanzhou’s legal team said in a new court filing. A volley of documents that were released on Thursday also suggests that the detained CFO was used “as a bargaining chip in a trade dispute.”

Her lawyers further allege the U.S. of distorting facts that Trump’s “offensive and ominous” comments, which came right after Wanzhou’s arrest reportedly “made all the more intimidating due to his history of interference in other recent high-profile criminal prosecutions.”

U.S. authorities are of the opinion that Wanzhou engaged in foul play, bu rendering misleading information to HSBC about Huawei’s relationship with a company operating in Iran, putting HSBC safety in jeopardy and violating U.S. sanctions on Tehran. The daughter of billionaire Ren Zhengfei, is currently under house arrest and free on bail, in Vancouver since her detainment. Wanzhou continues to allege that she is innocent despite losing her first legal bid to end the extradition process in May.

The financial chief’s lawyers have put an argument that the U.S. made baseless claims as far as the evidence is concerned, in the case against Wanzhou by “selectively summariz(ing) information ... and omit(ting) highly relevant information” pertaining to the information disclosed by HSBC about its operations in Iran.

In addition to hinting at Trump’s long-standing history of commutating the sentence of his associates, her lawyers also allege that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a huge role to play in terms of politicizing her extradition.

Trudeau’s team is yet to comment on the same, and so is The White House and the State Department.