Huawei mobilizes North American legal team once more

Embattled Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is reportedly going to challenge a recent FCC proposal, while there have been developments in the trial of its CFO in Canada.

Last month US telecoms regulator, the FCC, indicated it wants to ban Chinese vendors from receiving any money from its Universal Service Fund. Last week it formally proposed new rules ‘to remove bad actors from commission programs’. Specific bad actors weren’t identified, much to Hollywood’s relief, but the rules were clearly made with Chinese vendors in mind.

Now, according to the WSJ, Huawei is preparing a lawsuit to challenge the decision, with a formal announcement imminent. On the surface legal action such as this seems utterly futile, since the entire US state is clearly hostile to Huawei. But the US is supposed to have an independent judiciary devoted to due process, so anyone should be entitled to the safe treatment under the law, regardless of the political environment.

Meanwhile Huawei will also be hoping for impartial legal treatment in Canada, where its CFO Meng Wanzhou is under arrest, pending extradition to the US to be tried for a bunch of alleged crimes. The extradition hearing is due to take place in January and the CBC reports that Meng intends to ague that the crimes she is accused of don’t even exist.

“Initiating extradition proceedings in these circumstances would undermine Canada’s sovereignty and its independence on the world stage,” Meng’s lawyers reportedly reckon. “It is simply not Canada’s role to enforce American foreign policy through our laws, especially when such foreign policy is diametrically at odds with our country’s chosen legal framework.”

The core of the defense appears to be around ‘double criminality’, which means the act has to be a crime in both countries for extradition to be permitted. They seem to be saying financial deception Meng is accused of can’t be a crime in Canada because the sanctions it was supposedly designed to circumvent were US, not Canadian ones.