Huawei CFO freed in Canada after US deal on fraud charges
- 25 Sep 2021
Gulf Today Report
Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou flew home to China from Vancouver on Saturday after reaching an agreement with US prosecutors to end the bank fraud case against her.
Meng, the 49-year-old daughter of Ren Zhengfei, the billionaire founder of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, was granted release in a Vancouver court hearing after three years of house arrest in Canada while fighting extradition to the United States.
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Meng and the two Canadians — former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor — are all on their way back to their home countries after years of being detained in what critics have called "hostage diplomacy".
A video still shows Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou hugging a person in Vancouver airport. AFP
This came hours after US prosecutors announced an agreement under which fraud charges against her are to be suspended and eventually dropped as relieving a point of tension between China and the United States.
Within hours of the news of the deal, two Canadians who were arrested shortly after Meng was taken into custody in December 2018 were released from Chinese jails and were on their way back to Canada. Beijing had denied that their arrests were linked.
The years-long extradition drama has been a central source of discord in increasingly rocky ties between Beijing and Washington, with Chinese officials signaling that the case needed to be dropped to help end a diplomatic stalemate.
Security guards watch over an entrance at Huawei headquarters campus in Shenzhen, China, on Saturday. AP
China's government was eagerly anticipating the return of a top executive from global communications giant Huawei Technologies on Saturday following what amounted to a high-stakes prisoner swap with Canada and the US.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the two detained Canadians had left Chinese airspace, and were on their way home.
Their plane was expected to land Saturday in Canada, Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa, adding that they had gone through "an unbelievably difficult ordeal."
The "Two Michaels" were detained just days after Meng on what Ottawa has contended were "trumped up" espionage charges. In turn, Beijing called Meng's case "a purely political incident."
