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(Updates headline)
By Moira Warburton and Tessa Vikander
TORONTO/VANCOUVER, May 27 (Reuters) - A Canadian judge will
rule Wednesday on a key aspect of Huawei Technologies Chief
Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou's extradition to the United
States, with a favourable judgment seen as paving the way for
the release of the Chinese executive after 18 months of house
arrest.
British Columbia's Superior Court Associate Chief Justice
Heather Holmes will rule on the double criminality issue of the
extradition case, deciding whether Meng's alleged actions were a
crime in Canada as well as the United States at the time of her
arrest.
The ruling will be released at 11 a.m. Pacific time (1800
GMT).
Meng, 48, was arrested in Vancouver in December 2018 at the
request of the United States which accuses her of bank fraud and
misleading HSBC about a Huawei-owned company's
dealings with Iran. Meng has said she is innocent and is
fighting extradition.
The case has strained relations between Ottawa and Beijing.
Huawei's legal team argued in January that since the
sanctions against Iran did not exist in Canada at the time of
her arrest, Meng's actions were not a crime in Canada.
Prosecutors representing the Canadian government countered that
the lie itself was the fraud, regardless of the existence of
sanctions.
The defence's argument "has the potential to succeed," said
Vancouver-based extradition lawyer Mo Vayeghan, but they "face
an uphill battle" because prosecutors "emphasized that fraud is
at the heart of the criminal allegations," rather than the
sanctions.
A ruling in favour of Meng could carry a stay, giving the
Canadian government time to decide whether to appeal the
decision.
Should the judge rule in favour of the Canadian government,
the case would proceed to the next phase in June, arguing
whether Canadian officials followed the law while arresting
Meng. Closing arguments are expected in the last week of
September and first week of October.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Toronto and Tessa Vikander in
Vancouver
Editing by Denny Thomas and Lisa Shumaker)
