One of the top Canada Border Services Agency officials at Vancouver International Airport in 2018 - at the time of the arrest of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. CFO Meng Wanzhou - said she is "100%" confident that the border agent who passed along Meng's device passwords to the RCMP did so accidentally, the court heard Tuesday.
The afternoon portion of Tuesday's high-profile hearings began with the testimony of a ninth witness - CBSA Chief of Passenger Operations at YVR Nicole Goodman. The senior border official said she is confident border officer Scott Kirkland did not intentionally give Meng's passwords to police after obtaining them during border inspection.
"Officer Kirkland's actions are 100% accidental," Goodman said, adding that she knows "just by his reaction to finding out what happened and the fact that it's not something that we do" as CBSA officers.
"He is an outstanding officer, and he would not take that action deliberately," she noted.
The RCMP obtaining Meng's passcodes from the CBSA has been arguably the main point of controversy in the high-profile extradition case. The Chinese tech executive, who is wanted in the United States on charges or fraud, money laundering and violating sanctions against Iran, was questioned for three hours by the CBSA upon her arrival in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018 - where her devices and passcodes were taken without Meng being formally arrested (or having her charter rights read).
The RCMP then obtained both, although officials maintain it was a mistake - and no information was passed onto U.S. authorities like the FBI. Meng's defence, however, contends that Canadian officials intentionally obtained the information as evidence to aid the U.S.'s case against Meng - and colluded to secure both the devices and passwords from her without notifying her of her right to legal counsel before surrendering those items.
Goodman added that it is not unusual for border officers to write down device passwords on a piece of paper during an entry exam, since only information deemed serious enough to warrant a search would be recorded in the officer's notebook.
The CBSA official also said she does not believe her agency "assisted" or "coordinated" with the FBI in any way, despite e-mails from the FBI legal attache in Vancouver at the time using both words to thank border officers involved in the case. Goodman maintained that the CBSA had a duty to examine Meng's admissibility into Canada before any police arrest could be made.
"You can't just walk through the border," she said, noting the border agency has never delayed its mandate of assessing a passenger's admissibility into Canada in consideration of the RCMP.
"We have different mandates," Goodman said, adding that she has not seen the RCMP go onto a plane to serve arrest warrants while superceding CBSA authority during her decade-plus career with the CBSA at YVR.
She also noted that Meng would have been met and inspected by CBSA officials regardless of whether she decided to enter Vancouver on that day (or to stay in the transit area for her connecting flight to Mexico) because both are considered applications to enter Canada.
The hearings continue tomorrow.
The hearings resumed Tuesday morning again with defence attorney Richard Peck cross-examining RCMP Sergeant Ross Lundie, the officer handling police operations at Vancouver International Airport on the day of the arrest.
Peck pressed Lundie on whether he received orders from the FBI or any U.S. or Canadian authorities to obtain Meng’s passcodes for her electronic devices (which was taken from her by the Canada Border Services Agency upon her arrival in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018 and passed on to RCMP possesssion).
Lundie again stressed that he heard nothing about passcodes until after the fact, when he learned through media reports that the devices and codes were passed on to the RCMP by the CBSA – by error according to the Crown, or by intent to secure evidence without reading Meng her rights according to defence.
“Did [the FBI legal attache in Vancouver] ask about the passcodes?” Peck asked.
“Nobody asked for the codes,” Lundie replied.
Peck also again noted that – according to court documents and other information – that Lundie was taking notes for extended periods of time during Meng’s border inspection (sometime after 11:32 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2018), yet the notes presented to the court were “sparse” and “spartan,” according to Peck.
Lundie said he may have been writing notes of events that happened before that time, which would not be reflected by the amount of notes available on the events that were concurrent to the note-taking process on that day.
Peck, however, suggested that perhaps Lundie was concealing a second set of notes that was not presented to court – a charge that the RCMP officer flatly denied.
Lundie also noted in court that he immediately had concerns when he heard in the media that Meng’s cellphone and passcodes were obtained by the RCMP – but did not actively approach the officers involved or discuss the issue until he began preparing for last month’s court appearance.
He also said he found it concerning that numerous Canadian and American law enforcement officials in the case said in e-mail correspondences that Lundie “was the point-of-contact” for U.S. agencies such as the FBI.
“I was not aware I was put in that position,” he said, adding that the RCMP financial crimes unit should have been handling any contact with the FBI at that point.
“And yet there it was in black and white in an e-mail,” Peck said. “Do you not think you should have said something earlier?”
“That’s why I said earlier [in court] that I should have asked for clarity,” Lundie replied.
Crown attorney John Gibb-Carsley redirected Lundie to conclude the RCMP officer's testimony, again allowing Lundie to reiterate that he did not deliberately leave off the term "FBI" on his legal will say and other documents to conceal his contact with the U.S. agency, nor did he ever take formal orders from the FBI.
