Huawei chief executive Meng Wanzhou allowed to return to China after agreement with US prosecutors

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is free to leave Canada, where she has been under house arrest since 2018. The top woman was accused of fraud by the US and has now reached an agreement with the prosecutors.

Meng was present in the American courtroom via video link on Friday, Reuters writes. As part of the agreement, Meng admits that Iran’s Skycom, a company that Huawei described as a “partner company,” is in reality a subsidiary of Huawei. She would have concealed this from banks during a presentation in 2013. As a result, those banks approved hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions, despite a trade embargo with Iran at the time. In exchange for Meng’s confession, she will not be extradited to the US or further prosecuted and will be allowed to leave Canada and return to China.

Negotiations between the US and China in this matter are said to have stalled under President Trump, but have picked up again under current US President Biden. Two Canadian citizens, who were themselves arrested in China just days after Meng’s arrest in 2018, are on their way back to their home countries. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau confirmed this on Friday, according to CBC.

At the time, the arrest was a symptom of the escalating trade war between China and the US under Trump. Huawei is still on the so-called ‘entity list’ of the US, which means it is not allowed to do business with American companies. Huawei has seen its share of the smartphone market plummet in the past two years due to the trade ban. The manufacturer hardly ever comes up with new models in Europe and deliveries have more than halved in two years.