Meng Wanzhou extradition hearing set for January 2020

On 6 June 2019, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, scheduled the extradition hearing of Meng Wanzhou to begin on 20 January 2020. During the Supreme Court hearing, Ms Wanzhou’s lawyer suggested that the hearing could take up to two weeks. Ms Wanzhou will remain remanded on bail until 20 January 2020 and is not allowed to leave Vancouver during the interim period.

Since her arrest on 1 December 2018, diplomatic relations between China and Canada have worsened. On 10 December 2018, Canadian Diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor were arrested and have been denied access to legal advice. These arrests were reportedly an attempt by China to apply pressure to the Canadian government to ensure that Ms Wanzhou is not extradited to the US where she faces charges of bank fraud. Those charges relate to Ms Wanzhou’s alleged misleading of American banks by inducing them into doing business with Skycom, a Hong Kong-based company used by Huawei to allegedly do dealings with telecom companies in Iran, in breach of American sanctions against Iran.

So far in 2019, Chinese courts have sentenced two Canadian citizens to death. Fan Wei was sentenced to death for producing and trafficking methamphetamine in April 2019. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was also sentenced to death for drug trafficking in a retrial which took place in January 2019.

You can find more about the background to Meng Wanzhou’s case here.