Jeff J. Brown
Dateline: 15 November 2020 • www.chinarising.puntopress.com • jeff@brownlanglois.com
Pictured above: Meng Wanzhou and Huawei, two huge bullseyes in the USA’s ever-increasing campaign to decouple China, especially its high-tech juggernaut, from global trade and commerce. Left is a CCTV video capture of Meng’s apprehension at Vancouver Airport on 1 December 2018 and right is her employer, Huawei, the world’s biggest, most successful ICT company and 5G behemoth sans pareil. Based on this exposé, that is Meng in front on the left, followed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Mandarin interpreter and in back, RCMP Constable Dawn But, who filled out Meng’s arrest report (both South China Morning Post).
Note: In British Columbia’s Supreme Court, Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers are questioning 10 people surrounding her 2018 arrest. Some of them from Canadian law enforcement are discussed in this exposé. There will be a second round of hearings in December 2020. Stay tuned.
ONE December 2020 is the second anniversary of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver, Canada - or kidnapping - depending on your point of view.
Above: Frederic Pierucci and his book, The American Trap: My battle to expose America's secret economic war against the rest of the world.
If you work for the USA’s Departments of Justice, Treasury and State, with the CIA/NSA cheering from the galleries, it’s just a simple extradition request to “carry out the law”. If you are company executive Frederic Pierucci, Meng was kidnapped by the USA, just like he was in 2013, whereupon he was imprisoned for two years on similar – he would say – trumped up charges. His seizure was used to extort France’s flagship Alstom Corporation to pay $772 million in fines (ransom according to Pierucci) and sell off its most valuable portfolios to its USA competitor, General Electric (GE) - all to gain his release. Pierucci survived his maximum security incarceration and wrote a book about it, The American Trap: My battle to expose America's secret economic war against the rest of the world.
BELOW: Pierucci interviewed on French TV —(French only). Here Pierucci explains his ordeal in great detail.
Alstom : la France vendue à la découpe ? Frédéric Pierucci [EN DIRECT]
The USA’s booty for the US Treasury was to grab what at the time was the largest fine ever assessed, and for GE to seize key assets from and weaken one of its biggest global competitors. In Meng’s case, former assistant US attorney in New York, Nick Akerman, who was a Watergate prosecutor, and Joseph Campbell, director of Navigant Consulting and former FBI agent believe the US’s goal is to get her to sing about Huawei’s internal operations and name names – in other words, extort information out of her. We can also add that her seizure is just one more in a long list of anti-China “maximum pressure” measures that the Trump administration has been ratcheting up since 2017.
Pierucci and Meng are two headline catchers, but they are not alone. Eight foreign executives had already been arrested by 2007, using the US’s sweeping antitrust laws. There are many of others, including executives from Abraaj Group, Martinair Cargo and Parker ITR Srl.
Meng Wanzhou's unlawful arrest is a calculated slap in the face on one of China's most prominent citizens. (Photo: Meng wearing court-ordered ankle bracelet)
Largely (and typically) ignored by the mainstream media (MSM), there is also Wang Weijing, former Chinese diplomat turned Huawei marketing executive, who was arrested in Poland (a US vassal state) in 2019 for espionage. Also not reported much is that inside the USA, Chinese scientists and academics continue to be arrested or are mysteriously dying, with many more in the arrest pipeline, like Hao Zhang last month.
Whether the target is political-economic or a real crook, anti-trust lawsuits involve building legal cases which are hard work, expensive and must eventually be made a part of the public record, making them more accountable.
While an integral part of USA’s “diplomacy” going back to the Cold War, since 2017 the Trump administration has increasingly been using a second form of “enforcement” – legal or of the loan shark variety – take your pick: financial sanctions and economic/trade embargoes against targeted countries, their companies and executives. This includes purported “allies” too, like France and Germany.
The beauty for the USA is these sanctions are frequently applied against targets for violating other unilateral US sanctions, like against Cuba in France’s case and against Iran and Syria with Germany. This opens up America’s perceived geopolitical enemies and commercial competitors to thousands of “gotcha” traps. For example, a component from your company was used in parts sold to the targeted state/business, your company owns shares in another company in a similar trade transaction, or they paid/got paid via SWIFT bank transfer (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which the US effectively controls via the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
US sanctions have quickly become imperial fractal designs, which metastasize and multiply themselves across global commerce and trade. Who needs expensive, accountable anti-trust lawsuits? It’s easy to declare sanctions and often, this extortion is all that is needed to get the desired effect. There are countless thousands of countries, businesses and persons listed on the US Treasury’s sanctions webpages. It’s a helluva racket, to be sure.
This closed sanction loop, enshrined in the Trump-era CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act 2017) is a perpetual motion machine for American businesses to extort international competitors, as was the case for Frederic Pierucci and Alstom Corporation, as well as a geopolitical wrecking ball for US Departments of Treasury, Justice and State.
Above: one of two US Treasury websites that lists its massive global sanction and embargo programs. Note CAATSA.
This US modus operandi sure appears to be the case with Meng Wanzhou and Huawei.
What makes Meng’s story so volatile, is that due to her being arrested/kidnapped in Canada, her case is now a ménage-à-trois, with Ottawa being the submissive, some might say, masochistic Sino-American superpower monkey caught in the middle. Upon close examination, Canada and the USA claiming that they are only “respecting their extradition treaties”, that they must defer to their “independent judiciaries” and honor the “rule of law” is showing gross hypocrisy, if not many inconsistencies and fault lines. At least US President Donald Trump admitted publicly what routinely goes on behind closed doors. On 11 December 2018, just days after Meng’s apprehension, he said he’d be happy to use her as a bargaining chip to win a better trade deal with China.
Now we’re talking turkey.
***
On 22 August 2018, 100 days before Meng’s 1 December 2018 detention in Canada, the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn, New York City issued her arrest warrant, for “conspiracy to defraud multiple international institutions”. It was read out at Meng’s first court hearing on 7 December 2018, detailing the USA claims that she misled banks to circumnavigate unilateral American sanctions on Iran, sanctions that Canada opposes, which is rich, hypocritical irony, indeed.
Arrest warrants are a matter of public record, but a thorough search of the usual online databases draws a blank for 46-48 year-old Meng in the above court files. Why? Was it ever properly published in August 2018, as is the normal case, or was it kept secret? Why is it missing now? Checking using Chinese search engines (Baidu, Sogou, etc.), where stuff is often posted that is not seen in the West, also draws a blank. I have amassed a good collection of US and Canadian Meng Wanzhou/Huawei legal documents to create an online library, accessible to the public at the end of this exposé. This suggests it was never properly published in the first place, so that Meng & Co. would not be alerted.
Another interesting political aspect of her apprehension is that it was not made public for four full days, until 5 December 2020. Meng was in transit at the Vancouver Airport to continue on another commercial flight to Mexico City. Why such a long wait to tell the world? Typically, captors are anxious to tell the world about their “victory” in apprehending their catch. At the same time, the captive usually wants to buy time before it becomes big news, so as to gather as much information as possible.
No Canadian or US press conference seems to have been held to make the announcement, so it can be assumed that Meng’s lawyers leaked it to the media. We know that Meng was able to call her lawyer on 1 December 2018, as she requested to talk to her lawyer at 2:27 p.m., three hours after she was seized by Canada Border Security Agency (CBSA) - meaning immigration - agents. Here is the court registered timeline,
11:10 a.m.: Meng arrives at YVR (note: YVR is the code for Vancouver Airport) on Cathay Flight CX838 with a companion and gets off the flight. A provisional arrest warrant had been issued in Vancouver the day before by a Supreme Court of B.C. justice that ordered “all peace officers having jurisdiction in Canada to immediately arrest Wanzhou Meng.” Three CBSA agents are on the jetway and screen passengers as they leave the plane. The border agents have a description of what Meng is wearing. Two RCMP officers are observing. Meng is identified, told she was being detained, not told about the arrest warrant and two of her phones and one belonging to a travelling partner are seized and placed in mylar evidence bags.
11:35 a.m.: Meng is escorted by two CBSA agents to the secondary screening area where she is left by herself for 10 minutes. She is not free to leave or speak to any third parties.
11:45 a.m.: Meng is brought to Counter 21 in the secondary screening area and the two agents begin to question her and search her belongings.
12:03 p.m.: Meng’s bags are retrieved from the luggage carousel.
12:13 p.m.: A third CBSA agent approaches Counter 21 and speaks with the other two officers.
12:14 p.m.: Agents seize an iPad, MacBook and USB stick from Meng’s luggage. (note: all her electronic devices were put into bags provided by the US FBI).
12:20 p.m.: Two agents leave the counter while the third agent talks with Meng over the next 25 minutes.
1:09 p.m.: The two agents return to the counter, where Meng is asked more questions.
1:13 p.m.: One of the agents leaves and Meng is allowed to go to the bathroom.
1:55 p.m.: Meng is again interviewed by an agent for 14 minutes and is questioned about her role with Huawei. During this time Meng is compelled to handover the passcodes to her electronic devices.
2:11 p.m.: Meng is taken away from Counter 21 so that she can be arrested by the RCMP.
2:15 p.m.: Meng is taken into a room where the RCMP interact with her for the first time and she is told why she has been arrested and of her right to obtain counsel.
2:27 p.m.: Meng requests to speak with a lawyer (as per one of the RCMP officer’s notes).
3:20 p.m.: Meng is able to call legal counsel from YVR.
This is from the Memorandum of Fact and Law Application for Disclosure between applicant Meng Wanzhou and respondent The Attorney General of Canada on behalf of the United States of America, so it is totally legitimate. The full Memorandum is included in the Meng Wanzhou/Huawei Online Library, link posted at the end of this article.
Notice the fact when Meng was seized by two CBSA agents at the airport jetway, that,
Two RCMP officers are observing.
Above: Meng’s Vancouver Airport arrest report, signed by her in Chinese (孟晚舟) and filled out by RCMP agent Dawn But (identified in the timeline below). Notice that none of Meng’s nor her companion’s electronic devices are listed. Only Meng’s personal effects and clothing are listed. Sloppy law enforcement record keeping or another motive?
For most of us, likely including Meng, there is a huge difference in perception between dealing with immigration (CBSA) and police (RCMP) officers. Immigration greets us at the airport and stamps our passports, asking mostly innocuous questions about our visits.
Yet, not realized by most of us, immigration can serve court ordered arrests. Thus, why did the RCMP officers, who were standing right there, not arrest Meng directly? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. It was likely to give Meng the impression that she only had a problem with her Canadian paperwork, since she had been a legal resident of Vancouver since 2001, not that she was being set up for extradition to the USA on criminal charges.
Notice in the above timeline, CBSA held and questioned Meng for 2.5 hours (11:45 a.m. - 2:15 p.m.), where,
Meng is (again interviewed by an agent for 14 minutes and is) questioned about her role with Huawei. During this time Meng is compelled to hand over the passcodes to her electronic devices.
This timeline strongly suggests an illegal sting operation to get Meng to innocently spill the beans to immigration about her case and Huawei, give up all her passwords to the electronic devices that CBSA took and later turned over to RCMP, not to mention the devices of Meng’s still anonymous travel companion from Hong Kong.
Can you picture these CBSA wearing wire taps to record Meng’s 150 minutes of illegally gained testimony in Chinese and translated into English? Can you envision RCMP turning over all of Meng’s and her travel partner’s devices with passwords and pre-arrest interrogations to the FBI?
Thank you, Santa Claus! Merry Christmas and glory hallelujah!
Above: text messages between RCMP agents the day before Meng’s arrival, to plan for her capture.
Further and more detailed evidence strongly depicts an FBI and RCMP sting operation from the get-go ().
From British Columbia Supreme Court documents , we know that on the morning of 30 November 2018, RCMP’s Foreign and Domestic Liaison Unit (FDLU) got emailed about Meng’s arrival the next day, this news coming from the Department of Justice Vancouver Office (DOJ-VO).
From the time of the first email was received at 8:58 a.m. that day, RCMP and DOJ-VO worked feverishly, receiving a second provisional warrant that included the password protected Summary of Fact for Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese Citizen.
Finally, at 3:00 p.m.,
Warrant of Provisional Arrest in regard to Meng Wanzhou, aliases Cathy Meng and Sabrina Meng. Department of Justice attorney John Gibb-Carsley provided a copy of the warrant, granted by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Margot Fleming.
With only hours to go until Meng’s departure from Hong Kong, they then organized contact numbers for RCMP Regional District Officers, to locate a Mandarin speaking female officer to assist with the arrest. Two RCMP officers, Dhaliwal and Yep went to the Vancouver Airport (YVR) to speak to the Richmond RCMP based there to plan for her arrest.
Finally, at 7:52 p.m.,
The Provisional Warrant for Meng, granted by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Fleming, is posted on the Canadian Police Information Centre database.
Was CBSA ever contacted? I’d say No. One of the cardinal tenets of law enforcement is noting everything down, to use later as evidence, and up to now CBSA was not mentioned. Was the FBI sending instructions to CBSA on the side, for plausible deniability? Could be. In any case, five hours later, Meng’s flight, Cathay Pacific CX838 left Hong Kong for Vancouver and the next day’s trap was set and loaded.
The next morning, 1 December 2018, starting at 7:30 a.m., the likely real string puller for “Operation Snatch Meng”, the US FBI was emailing RCMP and CBSA agents, asking if all systems were Go. Notice that now, RCMP court records include CBSA as part of the action.
Two hours later, regional and local RCMP and airport CBSA agents had a meeting to plan how Meng’s arrest would proceed,
9:30 a.m.: (regional RCMP) Const. Dhaliwal and Const. Yep attend YVR and have briefing with (local RCMP) Sgt. Lundie, Const. Dawn But and (airport) CBSA officers Scott Kirkland, Sanjit Dhillon and Sowmith Katragadda.
Could the four RCMP officers at the airport have arrested Meng as she got off the plane, read Meng her rights to a lawyer and taken her straight to jail? Of course. But the three CBSA officers were certainly used to trick Meng into believing she had a Canadian immigration problem, not US criminal charges,
…while RCMP officers were watching as it happened.
This well-organized trap is further proven by ongoing court records (please forgive some necessary duplication in the two timelines),
11:21 a.m.: (CBSA) Kirkland takes control of two cell phones from Meng and one cell phone from her companion.
11:30 a.m.: Meng in CBSA secondary waiting area.
11:44 a.m.: (RCMP) Yep text to (RCMP) Dhaliwal: “She’s been pulled into secondary at CBSA with her female companion. Once they are done, we will serve the warrant on her.”
Need a smoking gun to get Meng’s case annulled? I underlined it and put it bold in case you missed it.
As described above, for the next two and half hours, the three CBSA agents illegally detained, questioned and extracted passwords from Meng and her never-identified travel companion.
Again, were they wearing wire taps or was this secondary waiting area wired to record audio-visual? I’ll bet the banquet bill at an all-you-can eat stir fry buffet that they were.
Praise the Lord and pass the soy sauce!
This court record again confirms it was exactly 150 long minutes,
2:13 p.m.: (RCMP) Yep and But escort Meng to room C2860.0 at CBSA secondary area.
2:15 p.m.: Warrant executed.
Even then, Meng wasn’t read her rights for another 12 minutes.
2:27 p.m.: Yep read Meng her rights.
With everything the Americans needed, the fig leaf of the CBSA “turning over” Meng to the RCMP was played out,
2:45 p.m.: (CBSA) Katragadda handed (RCMP) Dhaliwal a Hong Kong passport belonging to Meng.
2:59 p.m.: (RCMP) Dhaliwal seized all personal belongings subsequent to the arrest of Meng: two cell phones, one iPad; one MacBook computer; one Cruzer Glide 3.0 256 GB storage; eight pieces of luggage (suitcases, handbags and boxes).
3:32 p.m.: One brown Botega bag, wallet with money, large Rimowa blue suitcase and four rings given to her travel companion, as per Meng’s request.
3:53 p.m.: (RCMP) Dhaliwal leaves YVR for Richmond RCMP (note: police station) with Meng’s electronic devices (note below: apparently with Meng too).
4:38 p.m.: Dhaliwal observed Meng at Richmond RCMP cells. She is assigned prisoner number 849.
4:44 p.m.: Meng fingerprinted and photographed. The booking officer determines she is alert and her state of mind is “OK.” But her balance is “fair.” (note: Meng suffers from hypertension and is in cancer remission).
5:06 p.m.: Meng escorted to private phone room 407 to await a call.
5:17 p.m.: Meng picked up phone in room 407; she hung up the phone at 5:25 p.m.
Above: the first page of RCMP Constable Winston Yep’s testimony surrounding plans to arrest Meng Wanzhou. It and many other relevant documents are available in the Meng Wanzhou/Huawei Online Library, link at the end of this article (Scribd).
I’d fall over backwards if the Canadians, passwords in hand, did not make copies of all the data on the seized electronic devices. Then, I will bet your sweet bippy that the likely eminence grise of this illegal operation, the FBI had its Vancouver station officer, who was emailing the RCMP and CBSA the whole time, be the courier to ferry all the devices south of the border, along with the recordings of Meng’s illegal 2.5-hour interrogation.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Justice Ministers/Attorneys-General David Lametti and Jody Wilson-Raybould; British Columbia Supreme Court Justices Heather Holmes, Margot Fleming and Catherine Kane; Prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley, politico-media star Chrystia Freeland and their US equivalents can bloviate and pontificate all they want about the West’s “rule of law”, “judicial independence” and honoring treaties. Nevertheless, there has never been “blind” justice, whether it be Canada, USA, China or elsewhere. If this delusion were true, then why the big uproar about President Trump choosing the seat just vacated on the US Supreme Court?
At least China is honest about it, admits this reality and is trying to make its judicial process more transparent, but never to the point that it endangers the people’s freedom and independence from foreign subterfuge. To pretend that the legislative and executive branches of government are political, and that the judiciary somehow floats above it all, like an ethereal virgin in sacrosanct heaven is absurd and laughable. Thousands of victims like Fred Hampton, Jr. and Mumia Abu-Jamal have paid heavy prices for this bitter truth. I interviewed them both.
In summary, the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests that the USA worked hand-in-hand with Canadian law enforcement and its courts to deceive Meng Wanzhou into thinking she was arrested for an immigration problem, was compelled to turn over her electronic devices with their passwords, while being interrogated for 2.5 hours about her work and Huawei, only then to be served her arrest warrant and advised of her right to a lawyer.
The fact that the Canadian courts have refused to acknowledge the illegality of what happened to Meng is all you need to know about what a hollow farce Western “rule of law” and “judicial independence” really are.
On 25 August 2020, Meng was denied access to have the contents of six confidential documents fully released to her legal team after arguing in Federal Court that the redacted documents would support the position that their client was illegally arrested at Vancouver Airport. Canadian Justice Catherine Kane refused to do so. She claimed the contents were not relevant to the case. If so, why not let Meng’s defense lend their opinion?
On 9 October 2020, Meng was denied her request to be shown hundreds more documents deemed “confidential” by the Canadian authorities, related – you guessed it – to all the communication between the USA and Canadian agencies before and after her arrest. Meng’s legal team has already complained that all the documents they did get were heavily redacted.
Is it safe to assume that what Canadian authorities are hiding, under intense US pressure, involves all the evidence presented here? Is it likely these documents are be so damning, that Meng’s case would have to be thrown out, setting her free?
I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.
Meng Wanzhou/Huawei Online Library:
###
Key words:
Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, Canada, FBI, RCMP, CBSA, Sting Operation, Vancouver, British Columbia, Sanctions, Anti-Trust Lawsuits, Alstom, Frederic Pierucci
JEFF J. BROWN, Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China - The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017).
Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.
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