A federal judge in New York dismissed financial fraud charges against Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, four years after her arrest strained relations between the United States and China.
“It is hereby ordered that the third superseding indictment in the above-captioned matter as to the defendant Wanzhou Meng is hereby dismissed with prejudice,” District Judge Ann Donnelly said on Dec. 2.
Under the agreement, the government would put the prosecution on hold until December 2022 and drop the case altogether if the defendant complies with the specified conditions in the agreement.
U.S. Attorney Carolyn Pokorny on Dec. 1 submitted the request to dismiss the charges against Meng, claiming that there was no information that Meng had violated any terms of the agreement through Dec. 1.
“The government respectfully moves to dismiss the third superseding indictment in this case as to defendant Wanzhou Meng,” Pokorny wrote in the letter.
While the Dec. 1 move was expected, it closes a chapter on a particularly fraught phase of U.S.–China relations that also thrust Canada into the middle of a broader clash between the two powers.
Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 on a U.S. warrant. She was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges for misleading global institutions about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.Shortly after Meng’s arrest in 2019, Chinese authorities detained two Canadians and accused them of spying—a move widely seen as a tactic often used by Beijing known as “hostage diplomacy.”
They were released after Meng struck a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors and returned to China on Sept. 24, 2021.
Following the case, Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019 over national security concerns and human rights violations. The sanctions have restricted its access to critical U.S. technologies and crippled the firm’s smartphone business.
