NEWS ANALYSIS: The U. S. Department of Justice has unsealed a 13-count criminal indictment against Chinese electronics giant Huawei and its CFO for conspiracy and fraud.
Acting U. S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker announced Jan. 28 that the Department of Justice has filed charges against Huawei Technologies Co. and its CFO, Meng Wanzhou, for a series of alleged criminal acts, including bank fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction of justice and fraud against the United States.
The company has also been charged in a separate action with violating sanctions on Iran. In a separate investigation, Huawei is being charged with theft of trade secrets from T-Mobile.
The 13-count indictment, which includes allegations against Huawei, Huawei USA and Skycom Tech in addition to Meng, charges that the defendants conspired to commit bank fraud, and then did commit that fraud against four international banks with operations in the U. S. and the EU. They also allege that Skycom was used in a money-laundering scheme as a sort of cut-out to get around U. S. sanctions on Iran.
The charges list false statements by “Individual-1” who is identified only as a founder of Huawei to the FBI, false statements to the banking institutions listed as victims 1 through 4, and that Huawei made false statements to the press that were then used to mislead banks into doing business with Huawei. The indictment lists efforts by Meng to mislead financial institutions by speaking Chinese, and then providing fraudulent translations.
Incriminating Evidence Found on a Flash Drive
The indictment also provides information apparently retrieved from a flash drive carried by Meng that outlines how Huawei, among other actions, allegedly appointed top executives to other positions at Skycom as part of the obfuscation used in the activities of Skycom.
The indictment lists a series of overt acts, including lying to the FBI, lying to Congress, lying to banks to get services despite sanctions, a series of transactions in U.
