Virus hampering case defense, says Huawei

Bloomberg

Huawei Technologies Co says coronavirus is making it harder to defend itself against a US racketeering and trade-secrets theft prosecution.
Thomas Green, a lawyer for the Shenzhen, China-based telecommunications giant, said at conference in the case that travel restrictions have made it impossible for defence lawyers to gather evidence. The US State Department last month issued a do-not-travel warning for China over the COVID-19 virus outbreak, and many airlines have also cancelled flights.
“Now we can’t visit our clients,” Green, who represents Huawei and three related entities, told US District Judge Ann Donnelly in federal court in Brooklyn. “This is going to inevitably impact the progress of our efforts on this.”
He told the judge the defence was already hampered by national-security restrictions on what he and other American defence lawyers could share with their overseas clients.
Donnelly was sympathetic to Green’s virus woes but said, “Clearly there is not a lot we can do about that.” She set the next conference in the case for April 21.
The case is not the only one affected by the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, in December. In January, Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Roger Ng won a delay of his foreign bribery trial in federal court in Brooklyn from May until September because his lawyer was unable to travel to Asia to gather evidence.
Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition from Canada, were first charged in 2018 with conspiring to circumvent US trade sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

US prosecutors last month added racketeering and trade-secrets theft counts.
Following the hearing, Green said the Huawei defence was essentially frozen at the moment.
“We can’t do a thing,” he said. “I’m waiting for this virus to disappear.”