On December 6, 2018, Kan Nawaday was quoted in an article in Bloomberg about how Canadian authorities recently arrested Wanzhou Meng, the CFO of Huawei Technologies Co., China's largest smartphone and communications equipment maker, on behalf of the U.S. for allegedly violating American sanctions on selling technology to Iran.
According to the article, a hearing in Vancouver is the first of many in a process in Canada before Meng can be sent to stand trial in the U.S. Despite both countries having a longstanding treaty of governing extradition, it can take months, even years, for a defendant to be handed over, if at all. American authorities will have to reveal at least some of their as-yet secret evidence to justify the request to have Meng turned over and to show why they believe she committed a crime. A potentially thornier issue is whether Meng's alleged transgressions were a crime in both the U.S. and Canada. In addition, Canada's Iranian-sanctions policy is even less clear. If violations are enforced through the country's criminal code, then sanctions violations are not among the extraditable crimes described in the treaty.
"One of the main concepts of any extradition treaty between two sovereigns is dual criminality," said Mr. Nawaday. "The country where someone is found is not going to extradite that person to another country if what they did isn't really a crime in the country that has the person."