Thoughts on Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case and Chinese “justice”

By Jerome A. Cohen

The Canadian court has at last decided one important issue and will continue to hear others in the extradition case of Huawei’s Ms. Meng Wanzhou. The Canadian proceedings will go on for a long time. The trial court still has to consider several technical extradition questions. Then the appeal process will begin if the defense loses on those issues too, and there is also a serious issue about how long related Canadian government administrative measures will take, which will be a political football.

Despite continuing to live in the lap of Vancouver luxury, Ms. Meng ‘s business and personal life are undoubtedly significantly restricted, even though contemporary communications help to moderate these restrictions. But the real concern is that three Canadians (Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor and Robert Lloyd Schellenberg) detained in harsh incommunicado conditions in China continue to be held as hostages to Ms. Meng’s legal fate. They must not be forgotten, especially the two who were arbitrarily detained following the commencement of the extradition proceedings. 

In passing, it is also useful to recall that the PRC, when it can, does not hesitate to resort to extradition against persons it claims have violated PRC criminal law. Many countries, however, still refuse to make extradition treaties with the PRC authorizing such proceedings because of their fear of PRC “justice”. That’s what last year’s explosive Hong Kong extradition struggle was all about. Even the Chinese citizens of the SAR were afraid to be sent to their own country’s national law enforcement. Today’s sequel struggle is occurring because the PRC is about to take its law enforcement to HK!

It’s also helpful to note that the charges against Meng Wanzhou allege types of fraud and lying. Chinese business law generally bans such misconduct, as do American law and Canadian law. Practice, of course, is another thing, which is why such misconduct is criminalized.

If we had perfect knowledge of actual practice in various countries, we might be able to determine whether there is more fraud etc practiced by PRC companies than others. This is at the root of the current USG effort to delist PRC companies from American stock exchanges because the PRC does not allow US regulators to inspect the books of PRC companies listed on American exchanges, as other countries do. No country’s companies should be permitted to trade shares in the United States unless their books are subject to inspection by the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. This is essential to protect investors and institutional integrity.

Canada, China’s Schellenberg’s retrial and Beijing’s calculating maneuvers

By Jerome A. Cohen
On December 29 a Chinese appellate court ordered a retrial in the drug-smuggling case of a Canadian citizen named Schellenberg on the ground that the trial court’s sentence of 15 years of imprisonment was too light.

This is a clever move on the part of the PRC Government. Ostensibly the case has no relation to the Canadian extradition arrest of the chief financial officer,Meng Wanzhou, of the major Chinese technology company Huawei. Yet the court’s action adds significantly to the already great pressure on Canada brought to bear by the PRC’s recent arrest, detention and investigation of two other Canadian nationals for unnamed supposed national security crimes, leaving it open to the PRC to impose the death penalty or the death penalty with a two-year suspension or life imprisonment on Schellenberg at any time that might suit Beijing over the next few months or even years. Absent strong international protest against this obvious further PRC effort to distort its own justice system for political ends, I think there will be no final sentence in the Schellenberg case until the extradition case is resolved.

This drug prosecution was a weird, political case even before the Canadian extradition issue arose, taking the trial court over 32 months to impose sentence after the trial hearing. This usually only happens when there is immense behind the scenes lobbying over the inadequacy of the evidence and/or the diplomatic pressure brought by the foreigner’s government.

That the appellate court’s action in the Schellenberg case, which is unusual in itself, is related to the Canadian case is confirmed by the Chinese propaganda agency’s surprise invitation for some foreign media to attend and publicize the appellate court hearing. That certainly wasn’t done when the case was first tried in 2016 or when the defendant was finally sentenced in November this year, before the Canadian extradition was initiated.