U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Canadian counterpart said Friday that politics should not be a factor in the extradition of a Chinese technology executive arrested in Vancouver, British Columbia, on a U.S. warrant in connection with her company's alleged attempt to evade sanctions on Iran.
Pompeo and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters after talks at the State Department that they agreed due process must dictate proceedings in the case of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer at Huawei Technologies. The daughter of Huawei's founder, Meng was arrested Dec. 1 during a Vancouver layover. She is out on bond pending a hearing on her extradition to New York to face fraud charges related to Iran sanctions.
"It is very important for Canada that extradition agreements are not used for political purposes," Freeland said in French, according to an English translation of her answers at a news conference. "Canada does not do it that way. And I believe it is obvious that democratic countries such as the United States do the same."
Freeland's remarks appeared to be a reference to President Donald Trump, who said in an interview Tuesday that he might intervene in the legal case if it would advance his effort to secure a trade deal with China.
"If I think it's good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made -- which is a very important thing -- what's good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary," Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
At an Atlantic Council forum Friday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a member of the Senate armed services and intelligence committees, spoke approvingly of Meng's arrest. "By all accounts it appears she was facilitating sanctions violations against Iran," he said. "I want to see her extradited. I want to see her face the full force of U.S. law for violating those sanctions."
Asked about Trump's remarks, Cotton added: "I would not, though, offer to send her back to China or decline to press charges in return for trade agreements. I don't think that would be a wise course of action. It would send the wrong signal to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping. It would send the wrong signal to our allies. And we can get good trade agreements without doing that."
Meng's arrest has triggered a diplomatic row that has quickly escalated. China detained two Canadians this week in what is believed to be retaliation.
Pompeo called for China to release Michael Kovrig, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, and Michael Spavor, who runs cultural exchanges with North Korea. China's Foreign Ministry has confirmed the two were detained Monday on "suspicion of engaging in activities that endanger national security."
"The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable," Pompeo said. "They ought to be returned."
Freeland and Pompeo rejected the notion that the two Canadians are being used as bargaining chips in a trade dispute between the United States and China.
"I don't see it that way," Pompeo said. "We will continue to engage in legal processes until we get a just outcome."
Freeland said Chinese officials have not drawn a connection between the detentions and Meng's extradition hearing.
The details of the criminal charges against Meng, filed under seal, remain murky. But court filings in Canada and interviews with people familiar with the Huawei investigation show that the events leading to her arrest were set in motion years ago.
They grew out of a national-security investigation, during President Barack Obama's tenure, into Chinese companies -- including Huawei -- that act as extensions of the country's government, according to the people familiar with the investigation. The focus only recently shifted to whether Huawei, and specifically Meng, deceived global bank HSBC and other banks to get them to keep facilitating business in Iran. Former federal prosecutors said pursuing Meng, 46, for bank fraud proved to be a better line of attack than trying to build a case on national-security grounds.
U.S. national-security experts believe China has bolstered its economy -- now the world's second-largest -- by stealing corporate, academic and military secrets. Among the concerns is that Chinese telecommunications equipment could be used to spy on U.S. citizens. The top U.S. intelligence agencies told senators this year that Americans should not buy Huawei products.
Since at least 2009, Huawei had been a client of HSBC. In 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that Huawei, through a subsidiary called Skycom, had been secretly doing business in Iran.
HSBC asked Huawei if the Reuters report was true.
Huawei sent Meng to try to assuage HSBC's concerns. In August 2013, she gave a PowerPoint presentation to HSBC officials in which she denied that Huawei was connected to Skycom.
But in 2015, HSBC appeared to have a change of heart about doing business with Huawei. The bank's reputational risk committee met in New York and decided not to do business with Huawei's U.S. subsidiary.
By early 2017, HSBC and the court-appointed monitor inside the bank had disclosed the Iran transactions to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, according to a person briefed on aspects of the federal investigation. HSBC provided the prosecutors with Meng's 2013 PowerPoint presentation. HSBC said this week that it was cooperating with the government and was not under investigation itself.
In a sign of progress on the trade issue, China on Friday confirmed it will remove the retaliatory duty on automobiles imported from America, returning them to their July level, and is preparing to restart purchases of American corn.
The 25 percent tariff imposed on vehicles as a retaliatory measure will be scrapped starting Jan. 1, the finance ministry said. China also may buy at least 3 million metric tons of American corn, said people familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be named as the information is confidential.
The move was not a surprise, as it had already been disclosed by Trump as part of an agreement he forged with Xi during talks in Argentina at the end of last month that were aimed at calling a truce in the trade war.
Information for this article was contributed by Carol Morell, Ellen Nakashima and Anna Fifield of The Washington Post; by staff members of Bloomberg News; and by Matthew Goldstein, Emily Flitter, Katie Benner and Adam Goldman of The New York Times.
A Section on 12/15/2018