Huawei Technologies, a leading Chinese tech company, faces a criminal racketeering trial in New York over charges that it stole technology, plotted to steal U.S. trade secrets and committed wire and bank fraud, among other crimes.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
The indictment alleges that, besides stealing trade secrets, Huawei and some of its subsidiaries did business in North Korea despite U.S. sanctions there and installed surveillance equipment that helped Iran spy on protesters during 2009 anti-government demonstrations in Iran.
Huawei’s lawyers have tried to get the broad criminal case dismissed, arguing in court filings that the U.S. allegations were too vague and impermissibly tried to extend American authority abroad. The company said in a statement that the narrative pushed by U.S. prosecutors is “demonstrably false.”
“Long-term investment in innovation, backed by the utmost respect for intellectual property, has been the driving force behind Huawei’s business success,” the company said.
Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of gear for wireless telecom networks but the company is banned from selling equipment to U.S. carriers over fears it poses a security risk. It has also been blacklisted by other Western allies like Canada and Britain.
The company makes phones and other consumer electronics but has been cut off from other lines of business. More recently, it has expanded into chipmaking as the boom in artificial intelligence fuels demand for microprocessors.
During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, his administration raised national security concerns about Huawei and began lobbying Western allies against including the company’s products in their next-generation high-speed wireless networks. The U.S. announced the criminal charges in early 2019 and has since expanded the allegations.
Chinese officials said the U.S. government has engaged in “economic bullying” and improperly used national security as a pretext for “oppressing Chinese companies.”
U.S. prosecutors accused Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company known as Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. They also charged its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, with fraud, saying she misled HSBC bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was arrested in Canada in late 2018 on a U.S. extradition request but released in September 2021 in a high-stakes prisoner swap that freed two Canadians held by China and allowed her to return home.
As part of the deal, the U.S. dropped its extradition request and said it would dismiss the fraud charges against Meng.
The biggest maker of network gear, Huawei struggled to hold onto its market share under sanctions that have blocked its access to most U.S. processor chips and other technology. The limits led it to ramp up its own development of computer chips and other advanced technologies.
—Larry Neumeister, Associated Press