US Prosecutor Calls Huawei a Criminal Enterprise as Trial Opens
Huawei's US trial opens with DOJ accusing it of theft and sanctions violations; defense says charges are cherry-picked.
The trial of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei opened in a Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday, with a U.S. prosecutor describing the company as a criminal enterprise that stole from American firms to build its global dominance.
Trial attorney Taylor Stout told jurors that for two decades, Huawei engaged in "theft, lies, cover-up," victimizing American companies and abusing the U.S. financial system. The government alleges Huawei conspired to steal trade secrets from five U.S. companies, including router operating system source code from Cisco Systems and a robotic arm used for phone testing from T-Mobile. Stout said witnesses would describe catching Huawei employees "red-handed," including video of an employee taking the robotic arm.
Defense attorney Brian Heberlig countered that the case is about "competition, not conspiracy; innovation, not theft." He argued that Huawei earned its success through ordinary business dealings and that the government is "cherry-picking isolated events" that do not amount to an overarching conspiracy. He described the Cisco and T-Mobile incidents as actions by individual employees that management corrected, and a separate incident involving unauthorized photos of a Fujitsu device as a "foolish act" by an employee who was promptly fired.
The charges stem from a 2018 indictment that accused Huawei and its chief financial officer of bank fraud and sanctions violations for allegedly hiding business in Iran to move millions of dollars through U.S. banks. The case has since expanded to include racketeering charges. Prosecutors also allege Huawei helped the Iranian government spy on its citizens. The defense maintains there is no evidence Huawei knew the dollar-clearing would violate sanctions law and that banks were aware of the Iran business.
Huawei's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was detained in Canada in 2018 and freed in 2021 after a diplomatic deal. Her charges were dropped in 2022, but her admissions will be used at trial, which is expected to last three months.