Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou has lost a bid to have the extradition case against her thrown out, with a Canadian judge instead ruling on Wednesday that the US charges against her meet a key condition and the hearings must continue.
Justice Heather Holmes of British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the fraud charges against Meng satisfied the extradition requirement of “double criminality”, which demands that suspects be accused of something that would constitute a crime in Canada as well as in the requesting country.
Meng’s lawyers will continue to fight against her extradition on other grounds.
US prosecutors want Meng extradited from Canada to face trial in New York. Canadian police, acting at the request of US authorities, arrested her at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018.
The arrest set off a diplomatic firestorm amid the US-China trade war and sent Beijing’s relations with Ottawa plummeting. Meng is accused of defrauding HSBC bank by deceiving an executive in Hong Kong about Huawei’s alleged business dealings in Iran, a breach of US sanctions.
Meng will remain under partial house arrest in Vancouver, where she lives in a C$13.6 million (US$9.9 million) mansion on C$10 million bail.