US Prosecutors Label Huawei Criminal Enterprise in Trial Over Decades-Long Scheme to Steal Technology and Evade Iran Sanctions

A U.S. trial against Huawei opened September 9 in Brooklyn federal court, where DOJ attorney Taylor Stout told jurors the company ran a "far-reaching criminal scheme" spanning roughly 1999 to 2020, calling it "theft, lies, cover-up" 123. Huawei and three subsidiaries face 12 felony counts including racketeering, trade-secret theft, bank and wire fraud, and IEEPA sanctions violations tied to concealed business in Iran, with prosecutors citing video evidence of an employee taking a T-Mobile testing robot and stolen Cisco router source code 12. Defense attorney Brian Heberlig countered that prosecutors are "cherry-picking isolated events," calling the case "competition, not conspiracy" and noting gaps in the government's timeline 123. Judge Ann Donnelly ruled in June that admissions from CFO Meng Wanzhou's 2021 deferred prosecution agreement, in which she acknowledged misleading HSBC about Huawei's Iran dealings, can be used against the company at trial, expected to run about three months 23. China's Foreign Ministry called the prosecution U.S. "suppression" of Chinese enterprises 3.