Huawei says coronavirus hampering trade-secrets case defense

Huawei Technologies Co. says coronavirus is making it harder to defend itself against a U.S. racketeering and trade-secrets theft prosecution.

Thomas Green, a lawyer for the Shenzhen, China-based telecommunications giant, said at conference in the case on Wednesday that travel restrictions have made it impossible for defense lawyers to gather evidence. The U.S. State Department last month issued a do-not-travel warning for China over the COVID-19 virus outbreak, and many airlines have also canceled flights.

“Now we can’t visit our clients,” Green, who represents Huawei and three related entities, told U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly in federal court in Brooklyn. “This is going to inevitably impact the progress of our efforts on this.”

He told the judge the defense was already hampered by national-security restrictions on what he and other American defense lawyers could share with their overseas clients.

Donnelly was sympathetic to Green’s virus woes but said, “Clearly there is not a lot we can do about that.” She set the next conference in the case for April 21.

The case is not the only one affected by the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, in December. In January, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Roger Ng won a delay of his foreign bribery trial in federal court in Brooklyn from May until September because his lawyer was unable to travel to Asia to gather evidence.

Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition from Canada, were first charged in 2018 with conspiring to circumvent U.S. trade sanctions on Iran and North Korea. U.S. prosecutors last month added racketeering and trade-secrets theft counts.

Following the hearing Wednesday, Green said the Huawei defense was essentially frozen at the moment.

“We can’t do a thing,” he said. “I’m waiting for this virus to disappear.”