Meng Wanzhou hearing: Canada border boss warned officer not to create more records, in case they were accessed via information law
A senior Canadian border officer, whose team examined Meng Wanzhou before her arrest at Vancouver's airport two years ago, was told by her superiors not to create more records about the case, because they might be accessed under freedom of information laws.
Nicole Goodman, the Canada Border Services Agency's chief of passenger operations at the airport, said she was told "that was probably not a good idea because evidence should be tested in court", as she testified at Meng's extradition case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Wednesday.
Goodman described a meeting with her supervisor John Lindy and CBSA regional director general Roslyn MacVicar in late December 2018 or early January 2019. "It was in relation to creating records or additional information that may not be necessary. There were concerns with ATIP, access to information [and privacy]," she said.
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The meeting came after Meng's arrest on December 1, 2018. Goodman said that she wanted to create a summary of Meng's case, as a "kind of 'lessons learned'" document. But MacVicar deterred her.
She said she could not recall the exact wording, but "the context was 'well we shouldn't be creating additional records'," said Goodman, before correcting herself to say "unnecessary, not additional" records.
Meng's lawyers have depicted her treatment by the CBSA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police as an abuse of process, and part of a covert evidence-gathering exercise directed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation.
She should be freed as a result, they say.
Meng, who is Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, is wanted by the US to face trial in New York. She is accused of defrauding HSBC by lying about Huawei's business dealings with Iran, thus putting the bank at risk of breaching US sanctions on the Middle East country.
She denies the charges and is living under partial house arrest in her Vancouver mansion.
Under questioning by Diba Majzub, a Canadian government lawyer representing US interests in the case, Goodman denied that there was anything wrong about what she was told in the meeting with her bosses.
"It was not to conceal or suppress or hide anything. There's nothing to hide," she said. "We're fully transparent, there's nothing nefarious here. It's just that additional information was maybe not necessary."
On Tuesday, Goodman had testified about finding out that a note with the passwords to Meng's electronic devices had been lost by a colleague.
A redacted note of the passwords to Meng Wanzhou's two phones, written by Canada border officer Scott Kirkland in the hours before her arrest on December 1, 2018. The note ended up in the hands of police, in breach of Canada's privacy rules. Photo: BC Supreme Court alt=A redacted note of the passwords to Meng Wanzhou's two phones, written by Canada border officer Scott Kirkland in the hours before her arrest on December 1, 2018. The note ended up in the hands of police, in breach of Canada's privacy rules. Photo: BC Supreme Court
The passwords were written on a loose piece of paper by border officer Scott Kirkland during the examination of Meng in the hours before her arrest. But it ended up in the hands of the RCMP - in breach of Canada's privacy laws - when they arrested her on the US warrant.
Meng's arrest triggered a collapse of China's relations with Canada and the US.
Thursday marks the two-year anniversary of China's detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who Beijing accuses of espionage, but whose treatment is regarded by Canada's government as hostage-taking, in retaliation for Meng's arrest.
Canada's Ambassador Dominic Barton told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that the two men were "both very healthy, physically and mentally".
Reports emerged last week that Meng had been negotiating with the US Department of Justice about a deal that would allow her to return home to China, under a deferred prosecution agreement. Such agreements typically require an admission of wrongdoing and some form of cooperation, in exchange for charges being dropped in the future.
The reported negotiations have not been addressed in court.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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