After fresh allegations by the American prosecutors on Huawei’s violation of sanctions, the lawyers of the Chinese IT major have replied. As per Huawei, the American prosecutors have made a deal with HSBC for helping them in the investigation on Huawei, and in return, they have willfully overlooked HSBC’s violation of American sanctions in Iran.
Huawei’s lawyers said,
The government agreed to overlook HSBC’s continued misconduct, electing not to punish the bank, prosecute its executives or even extend the monitorship.
He added,
In return, HSBC agreed to cooperate with the government’s efforts to depict Huawei as the mastermind of HSBC’s sanctions violations and supply witnesses to the government’s stalled investigation of Huawei.
It should be noted that the U.S. Government has charged Huawei for banking fraud and violation of sanctions that have been in place against Iran on nuclear misconduct charges. Recently, the prosecutors have added multiple charges on the same.
As far as the indictment goes, Huawei along with its CFO, Meng Wanzhou has defrauded HSBC amongst many other banks in misappropriating information on the relationship with Skycom Tech Co Ltd, an alleged front company in Iran.
The lawyers of Huawei said as HSBC had obtained a deferred prosecution agreement, it processed every transaction through its New York branch and avoided revealing the same to the monitor appointed by the court.
However, HSBC has said in an official statement,
The Justice Department determined that HSBC met all of its obligations, including its sanctions obligations, under its 2012 Deferred Prosecution Agreement.
Meng, the CFO of Chinese IT major and Huawei’s founder’s daughter, was earlier arrested on the same charge in Canada. However, both the company and Meng have pleaded not guilty in the court.
No official comment from the U.S. prosecutors could have been fetched yet.
