Huawei CFO Arraigned on Bank Fraud Conspiracy Charges

Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng
Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng leaves her home in British Columbia, Canada, for an extradition hearing in November of 2020. (Image credit: Darryl Dyck/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Wanzhou Meng, chief financial officer of Chinese telecom and key 5G tech player Huawei, has struck a prosecution agreement and was subsequently arraigned on charges she conspired to commit bank and wire fraud.

Huawei is one of a handful of Chinese companies whose network tech the Federal Communications Commission has deemed a threat to national security and will be disallowed in government-funded broadband networks.

DOJ: Huawei Indicted on New Charges

Meng was arrested by the Canadian government in 2018 at the request of the U.S. The agreement means she will now be released.

“In entering into the deferred prosecution agreement, Meng has taken responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution,” Nicole Boeckmann, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

DOJ said that as Huawei CFO, Meng made misrepresentations to a financial institution in an effort to preserve Huawei's banking relationship, which DOJ said essentially confirms its allegations that Meng and other Huawei employees conspired to misrepresent its activities in Iran in what was a "consistent pattern of deception.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.