Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a short story on the financing angle of Huawei, and it sheds some light on how it came to be that Ms Meng was charged in Canada. According to this article, she made a presentation, later used in court, to HSBC to explain a relationship with SkyCom Tech and Iranian businesses. Ms Meng had been a board member on SkyCom and said she resigned. Reuters exposed SkyCom's relationship with Iranian companies in 2013, so HSBC was slow to ask about it. The article closes with this: "U.S. authorities now allege Ms. Meng misrepresented the ties to Skycom so that Huawei could keep moving money out of countries subject to U.S. or European sanctions and into the international banking system. They say HSBC and other banks cleared hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for Huawei that may have violated sanctions, exposing the firms to 'serious harm.'”
Banks are in a bind on this kind of thing because it involves unknown risks. They are starting to back away from Huawei as a result.
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