(Reuters) - The surprise arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer in December quickly turned the executive, Meng Wanzhou, into a central figure in a trade war between two economic superpowers.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters he would consider intervening in her case - a potential action he alluded to again two weeks ago - if it would help close a trade deal with China.
But U.S. probes of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for allegedly evading U.S. sanctions on Iran were not rooted in Trump’s trade aspirations. Long before Trump initiated a bitter trade war with China, Huawei activities were under scrutiny by U.S. authorities, according to interviews with ten people familiar with the Huawei probes and documents related to the investigations seen by Reuters.
The U.S. focus on Huawei intensified after years of investigation into smaller Chinese rival ZTE Corp, and relied in part on information collected from devices of company employees traveling through airports.
Two of the sources said a critical point took place in August 2017, when deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - best known for his oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the U.S. election – handed a lead role to Brooklyn prosecutors to pursue possible bank fraud charges against Huawei.
Fifteen months later, that strategy would help land Meng in a Canadian jail.
The U.S. investigations of China's top telecom companies were spurred by reports by Reuters over six years ago, detailing possible Iran sanctions violations by both ZTE and Huawei, as well as close ties between Huawei and
