Deep investigation into Huawei for U.S. criminal case officially opened: from Skycom, Meng to RICO, eight years of charges into the jury examination

September 8, 2026 Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. in the U.S. East District Federal Court in BrooklynFormally entering the criminal jury trial phaseThe jury selection was launched on the same day, and the first appeal is expected to begin on September 9.The case, chaired by U.S. Federal District Judge Anne Donald, is expected to last about three months.

This is not an ordinary business dispute, but a comprehensive criminal case covering 30 years of business activity, sanctions compliance, banking transactions, intellectual property and national security policies.The U.S. Department of Justice is currently accusing Huawei and related entities of conspiracy, extortion, theft of business secrets, banking and messaging fraud, violation of Iran’s sanctions, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

It should be emphasized first: all of the above are criminal charges of the U.S. government.Huawei has declined to be guilty of all charges, and any charges can only constitute a criminal conviction after the prosecutor has ruled out reasonable suspicion.

What this trial really needs to test is not only whether Huawei has violated U.S. sanctions, but whether the U.S. government has been able to scatter accusations over the years across different countries, different companies and different business lines, proving it to be a corporate-level crime system that can be established.

After eight years finally into the jury: why this trial is so important

The Associated Press on September 8 that the selection of the jury had begun the same afternoon.The Reuters reports.The case is expected to last for about three months and may overlap with the meeting of U.S.-China leaders in late September.

The case numbered 18-CR-457 in the U.S. Federal Court of the East District of New York. The U.S. Department of Justice initially secretly prosecuted Huawei-related entities in 2018, and opened allegations of bank fraud related to Iranian business in 2019.Significantly expand the scope of cases through alternative prosecutions in 2020Join RICO for allegations of conspiracy to blackmail and theft of business secrets.

Official documents of the Ministry of Justice for 2020This includes Huawei Technology Limited, Huawei Device, Huawei Device USA, Futurewei Technologies and Skycom Tech.

This means that the task the prosecutors now face is to link years or even decades of different incidents into a unified chain of criminal liability.

The core accusations of the U.S. government can be roughly divided into five groups:

• whether Huawei and Skycom's actual control relationship in Iran's business;
• whether statements made to global banks, those liquidated by the U.S. financial system, constitute fraud;
• whether it handles sanctioned transactions through US-dollar settlements and the U.S. financial system;
• whether it systematically acquires or attempts to acquire U.S. business secrets;
• whether these behaviors are sufficient to constitute a long-term corporate crime model under the RICO framework.

Skycom is one of the most important “connector points” in the whole case.

The first case centered in the U.S. Department of Justice was a Hong Kong company called Skycom Tech.

The prosecutors alleged that while Huawei described Skycom as an independent business partner, it actually controlled Skycom for a long time and used it to conduct Iranian business to obtain US-based goods, technologies, services and banking services that were originally restricted by U.S. sanctions.

The complaint released in 2019 said that Huawei employees had told the U.S. government and financial institutions that Huawei had sold its shares in Skycom and the relationship between the two parties was a normal business cooperation, but prosecutors said that the alleged sale was actually just a transfer of Skycom shares to another entity still controlled by Huawei, so Skycom was not really out of Huawei's control.

The Justice Department documents also accuse Skycom of processing about $100 million in transactions between 2010 and 2014 through an international bank, with at least part of the funds related to Iranian business.

If the jury accepts the prosecutor’s proof of “practical control,” whether or not Skycom is an independent partner will be a key bridge between Iran’s sanctions, bank fraud and money laundering allegations.

Ms. Meng has not been re-trialed in the case, but her statements at the time are still important evidence.

Meng was arrested in Canada in 2018 and is the most well-known scene in the case, but she herself is not now the accused in the Huawei criminal trial.

In 2021, Ms. Meng reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. As part of the agreement, she agreed to the accuracy of a statement of facts involving several statements she made in 2013 when presenting Huawei’s relationship with Skycom to executives of an international financial institution.

According to the Ministry of Justice, Meng said at the time that Huawei had sold Skycom shares and that Huawei's business in Iran complied with relevant laws and sanctions requirements.

The Ministry of Justice also said that a financial institution not named in the documents, but identified by several media as HSBC, continued to maintain business relations with Huawei after relevant statements.

The settlement of Meng's individual case did not end the criminal prosecution against Huawei.

Under the 2021 agreement, the U.S. government withdrew the extradition request against Ms. Meng and handled her personal charges after she fulfilled the terms of the agreement; but the Justice Department made it clear at the time that it would continue to prepare the trial against Huawei.

Therefore, today’s jury trial is not about “Meng Zhao to be tried again,” but about whether Huawei itself needs to bear criminal responsibility for the corporate behavior accused by the prosecutor.

Case extends from Iran sanctions to trade secrets and RICO

If the case only stopped at Skycom and the Iranian business, it would still be a complex sanctions and bank fraud case.

The U.S. Department of Justice has joined RICO’s allegations of conspiracy for blackmail, saying Huawei and some of its affiliates have long improperly obtained the intellectual property and business secrets of U.S. tech companies.

Means of prosecution include:

obtaining confidential information from employees of partners or competitors; encouraging employees to bring back protected information from other companies; obtaining technical details through commercial cooperation, testing or access to equipment; and implementing incentive mechanisms for employees who obtain technical achievements from competitors;

The Ministry of Justice has also publicly mentioned Huawei's trade secret dispute with T-Mobile test robot "Tappy", saying Huawei engineers were suspected of photographing, measuring and removing the robot parts. It should be noted that some of the trade secret disputes have previously been civilian lawsuits or separate cases processed, while Huawei has long believed that the U.S. government has repackaged resolved business disputes into criminal charges.

The meaning of RICO is that prosecutors don’t just have to prove an isolated incident, but try to prove the existence of a continuing, connected pattern of criminal activity. This is also one of the important reasons why Huawei’s defense has been vigorously demanding that the court reject the case.

How Huawei defends: whether U.S. jurisdiction is excessively expanded

Huawei has not only denied the allegations on a political level, its lawyers have long challenged the scope of criminal proceedings and U.S. law.

Huawei has requested the court to reject 16 allegations, including allegations that the prosecution is too vague, that some of the acts occurred outside the United States, and that prosecutors attempted to inappropriately extend U.S. criminal law to overseas business.

In 2025, U.S. District Judge Ann Donald rejected Huawei’s rejection request, arguing that many of the defense’s arguments were justified by the need to solve issues based on evidence in trial rather than directly eliminate the case before the trial.

Huawei has publicly stated that the overall narrative built by the U.S. government is "obviously wrong" and said its business success stems from long-term investment in innovation and respect for intellectual property rights.

As a result, the jury is faced not only with whether there are any transactions, but also with whether there is a sufficient legal link between those transactions and the United States, whether the banks are substantially misled, and whether the statements are deliberately required for criminal fraud.

Iran Business: Why Banking Fraud Becomes a Key Tool in Sanctions Cases

The U.S. sanctions law itself has a complex out-of-domain impact.For non-U.S. companies, Huawei, prosecutors have to establish criminal liability, and dollar clearing, U.S. financial institutions, and U.S. native technology become important connections.

One of the Department of Justice’s theories is that if Huawei continues to provide services to financial institutions without sufficient knowledge by hiding the true relationship with Skycom and settles related dollar transactions through the U.S. financial system, these statements could involve bank fraud, sanctions circumvention and money laundering.

The 2019 prosecution material of the Justice Department said that Huawei and related personnel have long stated to banks that their Iranian operations are in accordance with U.S. law, but prosecutors believe that the actual business arrangements are not.

That’s why the key to the case is not just “Does Huawei do business in Iran?” under the U.S. criminal framework, and more importantly: whether it hides important facts enough to influence bank risk judgment and thus continues to use U.S. regulated financial services.

Seventh, North Korea and Iranian surveillance accusations: It is necessary to distinguish between “accusation” and “confirmed facts”

The Associated Press and Justice Department documents also mentioned two groups of highly sensitive allegations.

First, the prosecutor accused Huawei and some affiliated entities of doing business with North Korea in the context of U.S. sanctions and made false statements about related activities.

Second, the prosecutors accused Huawei of providing technology and equipment in Iran of being used to assist Iranian authorities in monitoring anti-government protesters in 2009.

The content is still a formal allegation that the U.S. government needs to prove in court, and cannot be written as a fact that the court has determined. Huawei denies the existence of criminal violations.

This distinction is important for an in-depth investigation report: the indictment can prove “what the U.S. government has officially made” but can’t individually prove “what these allegations have been made.”

Why the U.S. Department of Justice would use RICO to prosecute a multinational tech company

RICO was originally widely known for combating organized crime, but its application is not limited to traditional black society. As long as prosecutors can prove the existence of a "business" and specific pre-crime that continues to occur around the enterprise, RICO could be used in complex corporate crime cases.

For Huawei, RICO’s allegations threaten mainly in three areas:

• It allows prosecutors to incorporate years of different events into a whole narrative;
• it could expand the jury's understanding of the "continuing crime pattern";
• Once convicted, the confiscation and fine disputes could be significantly widened.

A Reuters report on September 8 quoted legal experts as estimating that if Huawei was convicted of all the major crimes, the potential economic penalty could rise from hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars, depending on how the court calculates the profits enterprises get from alleged criminal acts.

But “possibly billions” are currently just estimates by legal experts of potential fines, not the amount of fines that the court has determined.

This trial cannot be simply confused with U.S. science and technology policy towards China.

Since 2019, the U.S. government has also restricted Huawei’s access to U.S. technology and participation in some communications markets by means of entity lists, export controls, communications equipment restrictions and allied coordination.

These administrative and trade measures are politically related to today’s criminal cases, but they are not of the same legal nature.

Criminal courts must determine whether Huawei is guilty on the basis of evidence and criminal law requirements; entity lists and national security restrictions are administrative and policy tools that do not need to wait for a criminal conviction to be enforced.

The Chinese government has long criticized the United States for suppressing Chinese enterprises on the pretext of national security; Huawei has also described the criminal cases as part of a wider campaign to curb China’s technological development.

Focus on China believes that it is precisely because the case lies in the broad context of U.S.-China scientific and technological competition that it is more necessary to adhere to the most basic legal boundaries: political competition cannot replace criminal evidence, and the size of enterprises and national background cannot be exempt from judicial review.

A few questions the jury really needs to answer.

In the coming months, prosecutors and lawyers will compete around large amounts of company documents, bank communications, employee testimonies and transaction records.

• whether Huawei actually controls Skycom, and how it describes this relationship with banks;
• whether statements about Iranian business are known to be false or significant omissions;
• whether the transactions are sufficient to link the U.S. financial system with sanctions laws;
• whether business secret allegations are actually criminal theft, or commercial competition and past civil disputes;
• whether various incidents can be proven to be a continuing RICO crime pattern by law;
• whether prosecutors can meet the criteria for “excluding reasonable suspicion” in criminal cases.

Prosecution does not equate to conviction, sanctions do not equate to court convictions.The only real change to Huawei’s legal status is the judgment of the jury and the subsequent judgment of the court.

11th, the defendant's seat at the Huawei company station from Meng's boat back home

After Meng's return to China in 2021, the Chinese public opinion has easily created the impression that the most core case between Huawei and the U.S. Department of Justice has ended.

The fact is not so.

Ms Meng addressed her personal criminal charges and extradition proceedings.The U.S. Department of Justice never revoked the entire case against Huawei.Instead, the Department of Justice made it clear when it announced Ms Meng’s deferred prosecution agreement that the prosecution against Huawei would continue.

Five years later, the long-staying case in prosecution, diplomatic conflict and sanctions policy was finally brought to the jury.

This also brings the case into a new phase: over the past eight years, the two sides have mainly argued about “whether the United States is entitled to prosecute this way”; from now on, the core will be the story of whether the U.S. government can use evidence to prove what it has written into the prosecution.

What consequences may this trial have left

Regardless of the final ruling, this trial will have an impact far beyond one company.

If the prosecution succeeds, it will strengthen the U.S.’ use of criminal justice, sanctions regulations and the financial system to track multinational technology companies’ behavior, and could provide a model for future cases of similar national security and commercial crimes.

If Huawei gets an innocence ruling, especially over charges of core RICO, bank fraud or business secrets, it would have a major impact on some of the criminal narratives that the United States has built around Huawei over the past few years, and could also be used by Beijing to intensify “political repression” arguments.

And if some of the charges are found and some of the charges are not found, the case is likely to go into longer-term fines, confiscation, appeals and corporate compliance disputes.

Focus China will continue to track the composition of the jury, the opening of the case, the key witnesses of the prosecution, the evidence of the Skycom control relationship, the testimony related to HSBC, the sections of business secrets and the final judgment of the jury.

There is only one conclusion that can be confirmed today: the major criminal confrontation between Huawei and the U.S. Department of Justice, which lasted eight years, has really entered the stage of the jury reviewing the evidence from political debate, diplomatic crisis and written accusations.

Whether or not Huawei constitutes the corporate-level crime system accused by the U.S. government is no longer just a dispute between the administration and corporate public relations.

Next, the evidence must speak in court.