U.S. to drop fraud charges against top Huawei executive

Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York announced in court Friday that they will drop bank and wire fraud charges against the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies and remove an extradition request to detain her if she complies with a deferred prosecution agreement.

Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, admitted that she attempted to defraud an American financial institution by misrepresenting her company's ties to Iran in an effort to avoid U.S. sanctions against Iran.

In the statement of fact, in which Meng took responsibility, she told a financial institution that Huawei had "normal business cooperation" with the Iran-based company Skycom when, in reality, Huawei controlled Skycom and "Skycom employees were really Huawei employees." She admitted that she concealed the nature of Huawei's relationship with Skycom and Skycom's violation of U.S. sanctions.