Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou received death threats in mail, Canada court hears

5:02 pm Wednesday, January 13th, 2021

By Moira Warburton

(Reuters) – Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou received multiple death threats, including bullets in the mail, while under house arrest in Vancouver, a Canadian court heard on Wednesday.

The threats were revealed during testimony by Doug Maynard, chief operating officer of Lions Gate Risk Management, the company providing her security detail.

Meng received “five or six” threatening letters at her residence in June and July 2020. The Vancouver Police Department was involved in examining the evidence of the threats, Maynard testified in the British Columbia Supreme Court.

The letters were “coming by mail and they were easily identifiable by markings on the outside,” Maynard said.

Meng and her lawyers are back in court this week, pushing for conditions of her bail to be loosened, including dropping the daytime security detail that follows her 24/7.

Meng, 48, was arrested in December 2018 at the Vancouver International Airport on a warrant from the United States, where she is facing charges of bank fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran and potentially causing the bank to break U.S. sanctions.

She has said she is innocent and is fighting extradition. She was released on bail shortly after her arrest and has been under house arrest in Vancouver since then.

Lions Gate worked with Meng and her staff to ensure the evidence was not contaminated and opened the letters to confirm they were threats, Maynard said, adding that “sometimes there were bullets inside the envelopes.”

The sender’s identity and possible motivation were not disclosed.

The exact role of the Vancouver police was not clear, and neither was the outcome of any investigations. Police did not immediately return a request for comment.

Meng’s bail hearing will wrap up on Wednesday afternoon. Her extradition case is set to finish in May.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Toronto; Editing by Matthew Lewis)