In a Canadian courtroom, authorities revealed details of the charges facing Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei official whose arrest has shaken U. S.-China relations.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The reasons that the United States asked the Canadian authorities to arrest a top executive of the Chinese technology company Huawei last week had been shrouded in mystery.
On Friday, the details of the arrest and what led up to it came out in a Canadian courtroom.
At a bail hearing in Vancouver for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and a daughter of the company’s founder, Canadian prosecutors said she was accused of fraud. The heart of the charges related to how Ms. Meng may have personally participated in a scheme to trick American financial institutions into making transactions that violated United States sanctions against Iran, they said.
Ms. Meng had “direct involvement” with Huawei’s representations to banks, said John Gibb-Carsley, an attorney with Canada’s Justice Department.
The hearing shed light on an incident that has rattled the relationship between the United States and China. While changing planes in Vancouver on Dec. 1, Ms. Meng was arrested at the behest of the United States, which has for years looked into potential ties between Huawei and the Chinese government or Communist Party.
Her arrest occurred as the United States and China are about to enter negotiations to cease a brutal trade war. Because of Ms. Meng’s stature in China as a top executive and part of its elite, news of her arrest has rippled through the country.
With Ms. Meng, 46, seated inside a glass box at British Columbia’s Supreme Court, Mr. Gibb-Carsley laid out what had led to her arrest. He said that between 2009 and 2014, Huawei used a Hong Kong company called Skycom Tech to make transactions in Iran and do business with telecom companies there, in violation of American sanctions against Iran.
