The U.S. Department of Justice laid out its case against Huawei in a press conference in Washington, D.C. There are two cases where the DoJ is pursuing legal actions:
- A grand jury in Seattle returned an indictment alledging 10 federal crimes by two affiliates of Huawei Technologies. The indictment alleges that in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information about a robot that T-Mobile used to test mobile phones. Huawei engineers are alleged to have violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of the robot, measuring it, and stealing a piece of it.
- A grand jury in New York returned an indictment alleging 13 additional crimes committed by Huawei, its CFO, its affiliate in Iran, and one of its subsidiaries in the United States. This criminal activity is said to go back ten years and to involve top officials of the company. The indictment alleges that beginning in 2007, Huawei began to misrepresent its relationship with its Skycom affiliate. By claiming Skycom was a separate company, Huawei represented that it was in compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran. Furthermore, Huawei is alleged to have misrepresented financial transactions with multiple banks.
- Defendants from both cases are variously charged with conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, violations of the Emergency Economic Powers Act, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
The DoJ is seeking the extradition of Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, from Vancouver, Canada, where she was arrested in December.
The DoJ further alleges that Huawei lied to the U.S. government and attempted to obstruct justice by concealing and destroying evidence, as well as moving executives back to China.