Huawei CFO wins right to access more documents in extradition fight

Legal team of Huawei's chief financial officer won a court ruling on Tuesday after a B.C. Supreme Court judge asked Canada's attorney general to submit more evidence and documents relating to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou.

Huawei Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, stops to talk to media while leaving her Vancouver home to appear in British Columbia Supreme Court, in Vancouver, on October 1, 2019. [File photo: AFP/Don MacKinnon]

According to Meng Wanzhou's lawyers, these documents and records may help them argue that Meng's Charter rights were violated last year during her questioning and arrest in Vancouver.

In the view of Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, there is a realistic possibility that the Canada Border Services Agency, the RCMP and the FBI, among others, may have been part of a "covert criminal investigation," as Meng's defense team argued.

In her ruling, Holmes wrote that she found the evidence tendered by the attorney general to have "notable gaps," citing the example of why the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) "made what is described as the simple error of turning over to the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), contrary to law, the passcodes CBSA officers had required Ms. Meng to produce."

Holmes also said the attorney general did not provide adequate evidence to "rebut inferences from other evidence that the RCMP improperly sent serial numbers and other identifiers of Ms. Meng's devices to the FBI."

Holmes said the gaps in evidence raised questions "beyond the frivolous or speculative about the chain of events," and led her to conclude that Meng's application "crosses the air of reality threshold."

What happened during the three hours?

Meng was detained and questioned at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) in December 2018 for nearly three hours by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) prior to her arrest by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Evidence showed that Canadian authorities had flaws in their enforcement process and improperly handled identifying information about Meng's electronic devices.

The warrant of provisional arrest issued on November 30, 2018 said "YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to immediately arrest Wanzhou Meng and to bring her before a judge or justice within twenty-four hours… for which this shall be your warrant."

However, the CBSA delayed the order of "immediately arrest" on December 1 and seized Meng's cellphones, tablet and other devices and wrote down her passcodes on a piece of paper that they handed to the RCMP when she was arrested.

The codes could not be used or shared because they'd been obtained during a CBSA examination.

The border agency later realized it had made a mistake and told the RCMP the codes, a Crown lawyer said in October.