Huawei asked a US judge to dismiss large portions of a federal indictment accusing the company of trying to steal technology secrets from American competitors and misleading banks about its dealings with Iran, in the latest move in a legal case dating back to 2018.
In the Friday night filing in Brooklyn, New York federal court, Huawei said there was no proof of a conspiracy and said the charges were part of the Justice Department’s “ill-founded” China Initiative to prosecute people and organisations linked to China.
Several charges relate to Huawei’s activities outside the US, and the bank fraud counts rest on a “right to control” theory of fraud that the US Supreme Court rejected last year, Huawei said in the filing.
It accused the US government of treating Huawei as a “prosecutorial target in search of a crime”.
The case began with a sealed indictment in 2018, under then-president Donald Trump, that led to the arrest in Canada of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou.
Meng, a high-profile figure in China, is also the daughter of Huawei founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.
Her detention in Vancouver lasted for three years it ended under a September 2021 deal reached with the Biden administration.
The case against her was finally dismissed in December 2022.
Her detention led to a considerable deterioration in diplomatic relations between China, Canada and the US.
The China Initiative was another 2018 Trump administration initiative intended to counter China’s alleged theft of US intellectual property.
The Biden administration ended it in 2022 amidst criticism that it amounted to racial profiling and chilled the climate for scientific research.
Huawei has been placed under multiple US trade sanctions since 2019, when it was placed on the Entity List blacklist on national security grounds.
In a status conference in April, assistant US Attorney Alexander Solomon said settlement discussions with Huawei over the case had “ended in an impasse” and asked for a trial date.
US District Judge Ann Donnelly set a provisional date of January 2026 for the trial.
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