Last checked at 
By Moira Warburton
VANCOUVER, June 29 (Reuters) - Lawyers fighting the
extradition of Huawei's chief financial officer to the United
States on Tuesday presented internal emails from British bank
HSBC that they said disproved U.S. claims that Huawei
misled the bank.
CFO Meng Wanzhou's legal team said the emails and documents
submitted to a Canadian court showed at least two senior HSBC
leaders were aware of connections between Huawei and
its Iranian subsidiary, Skycom. HSBC declined to comment.
Meng's lawyers are trying to add the documents to evidence.
They are meant to counter U.S. charges that only junior
employees of the British bank knew about the true nature of
relationship between Huawei and Skycom.
U.S. prosecutors have alleged that Meng misled HSBC about
Huawei's business dealings in Iran and may have caused the bank
to break U.S. sanctions.
Meng, 49, was arrested in December 2018 at Vancouver
International Airport on charges of bank fraud in the United
States. She has been held on house arrest for more than two
years while her case moves through the Canadian legal system.
Her legal team has extracted internal documents from HSBC
through a court in Hong Kong, and they hope to refer to them in
the case's final hearings scheduled for August.
In particular, the defense alleges that two HSBC managing
directors viewed Meng's presentation to HSBC about Huawei's
business in Iran. They said it made clear Skycom's ownership
structure.
Meng and her legal team appeared in the British Columbia
Supreme Court on Tuesday on the first day of a two-day hearing
where they will argue to add more evidence to support her case.
The evidence shows the U.S. argument is "so defective as to
compel the courts to place no reliance on them," Mark Sandler,
defense lawyer for Meng, told the court.
Prosecutors representing the Canadian government argued that
the evidence and arguments were beyond the scope of an
extradition hearing.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; Editing by Cynthia
Osterman)
