Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> The illusion of the rule of law

Rule of law has always been national. International politics are anarchic. Huawei quite clearly broke the laws of the United States (e.g. with respect to Iran), repeatedly and wilfully.

View on HN

Huawei may have broken the law with respect to violating U.S's sanctions on Iran. These are still unproven allegations as of yet.

Meanwhile, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan have provably done exactly that.

Yet there is only one C-suite level executive who is currently being held personally, criminally liable for corporate actions. I guarantee you won't be seeing Jamie Dimon threatened with prison time for JP Morgan's 87 violations of Iranian sanctions and Weapons of Mass Destruction sanctions, anytime soon.

Laws which are enforced selectively lack credibility.

Very simply, sanctions evasion is enforced differently from other domains. In any case, China is a terrible foil for the rule of law. Meng will get a fair trial in America. Nobody from anywhere would get the same in China.

> Meng will get a fair trial in America.

Your faith is US justice is admirable and patriotic. Do you believe Assange would also get a fair trial in USA ?

Fairer than in China!

> Do you believe Assange would also get a fair trial in USA ?

No. I don’t believe secret courts can be fair courts.

Meng, however, is being charged through normal channels by a prosecutor who must make a case in the regular court system. The charges and decisions will be made in the open. (There is a decent chance, due to the difficulty of admitting large swaths of evidence, that she could win.)

Importing goods to Iran really isn't a violation of US laws, any more than, say, a twenty year old Huawei employee having a beer in Beijing or driving at 120 mph on a German autobahn. The rule of law is indeed national, and legally the US has very little jurisdiction outside its borders. Extralegally, of course, it has plenty of powers to arrest, kill or torture those it doesn't like.

The allegations against Huawei aren't that it "imported goods into Iran." The allegations are that it imported American goods into Iran, which is clearly a violation of US export laws. If such laws didn't apply to third-party distributors of American goods, then the only effect of US sanctions would be have foreign distributors exporting American goods rather than American ones.

Huawei appears to have known this as well seeing as Meng Wanzhou had fraudently misrepresented the relevant transactions to the banks it was working with.

There was nothing extralegal about Meng Wanzhou's arrest.

The allegation is not quite that Huawei imported American goods into Iran. The accusation is that Huawei misled a non-American bank, HSBC, about its relationship with Skycom, a company that is accused of importing some American office computers into Iran. The US alleges that Huawei essentially controls Skycom, and that it hid this from HSBC, a British bank. Since HSBC does business in the US, it would not be allowed to give loans to Huawei.

You can start to see how far-reaching American sanctions are. A British bank is being told that it cannot do business with a Chinese company, because that Chinese company allegedly controls a Hong Kong company that imported small numbers of American goods into Iran. As I understand it, these sorts of extensive secondary sanctions are not normal, and are a sore point between the US and many countries, including some of its allies (such as France and Germany).

I would be very interested to know what gives the US any jurisdiction to demand the arrest of a foreign executive on foreign territory, for acts committed on foreign territory. Whatever the legal justification, though, this is a very unusual and aggressive step, and one that is transparently motivated by political considerations in the ongoing trade war.

> what gives the US any jurisdiction to demand the arrest of a foreign executive on foreign territory, for acts committed on foreign territory

She violated American laws with American products using U.S. dollars for years. She then travelled to an American ally.

This is a stupid counter argument.

Where does the US have jurisdiction? This is a legitimate question. What legal right does the US government have to enforce US laws on a foreigner who isn't in the US, for actions taken outside the US and which were not illegal in the country the person resides in? I'd legitimately like to know what sort of legal argument is used to justify this, because it sounds like a massive overreach by the United States. Regardless, arresting the CFO of a major corporation - the daughter of the CEO - in such a manner is an extremely aggressive act.

The US has a reciprocal agreement with Canada. These agreements are the basis for jurisdiction.

I always wonder how mutual these agreements are. Probably more like “Sign this agreement or else”.

I'm not just asking why Canada is handing over the Huawei CFO. I'm asking how the US has jurisdiction to even prosecute the supposed underlying crime. The connection of any of her actions to the United States is extremely tenuous and indirect. They occurred outside the United States, were legal in the country where they occurred, she doesn't work for an American company, she's not an American, and she wasn't even dealing with an American company. Just imagine what it would be like if every country began applying its domestic law extraterritorially in such an aggressive manner.

Since when does the US set laws for Huawei? The attitude that the whole world must obey US laws is being increasingly rejected. And not before time.

they set the law for companies that want to do business in and with the USA, anything else would just lead to ridiculous shell games where corporations could break laws with impunity by farming it out to "completely independent foreign companies".

Its fine if Huawei doesn't want to follow US law, but they shouldn't expect to do business with Americans or American companies either.

The allegations have not been proven in court yet, but US is already disrupting Huawei's business and US companies are cancelling the contracts. That's not how law works.

These aren't American companies. America's actual position is something more like this:

"If you do business in any way with any Americans at any point, regardless of who you are or where you're based, then you will be thrown in jail the moment we can get your hands on you, if you do business with anyone on this list, or with anyone who does not implement our rules either"

See how companies like ARM are being forced to stop doing business with Huawei despite not being American companies. It's massive overreach.

> Huawei quite clearly broke the laws

Was it proven in court or we should just believe everything US administration says?

what are you smoking. Even if Huawei broke US laws (unproven, no evidence, no court proceedings), who gave US the right to divert other people's packages in a foreign country?

Are you saying that I can simply divert you mail because I think you broke my laws?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com