Huawei Calls Arrest of its CFO "Politically Motivated"

Huawei is in the news again (let’s face it, though – they never left). This time, the Chinese telecom giant is crying foul over the arrest of the founder’s daughter, Meng Wanzhou, calling it politically motivated.

Back in December, Canada arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. warrant, which charged her with bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to bypass U.S. sanctions on doing business with Iran.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei claimed the arrest was bogus, a result of the ongoing proxy war between China and the U.S.

“I object to what the U.S. has done. This kind of politically motivated act is not acceptable,” Ren told the BBC.

Ren had previously suggested that Huawei was an innocent pawn.

"I think both China and the United States are of large scale. And while those powers clash, our company is as small as a tomato. We are not that — we do not carry that big weight, and neither does Miss Meng Wanzhou,” Ren claimed.

He also claimed that Huawei doesn’t spy, steal IP, or install backdoors in its software, and even if China ordered them to do so, they’d refuse.

But even if Huawei officially forbids espionage, several employees didn’t get the memo. Last month, Poland arrested a Huawei executive on spying charges. The U.S. Department of Justice also contends that Huawei offered bonuses to employees who stole trade secrets from other companies. That led to an effort to steal info on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot named “Tappy.”

Huawei distanced itself from both cases, alleging the T-Mobile scandal was the result of “rogue employees,” while it publicly fired the executive from Poland, claiming he brought the company into "disrepute."

But Huawei is standing by its Chief Financial Officer, for fairly obvious reasons. The courts will decide whether Meng Wanzhou will be extradited to the U.S.