Huawei Technologies on Tuesday lost its bid in federal court to dismiss most of a Department of Justice indictment charging it with trying to steal technology secrets from U.S. rivals and mislead banks about its work in Iran. The ruling paves the way for a trial next spring.
U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, in a 52-page ruling, said the 16-count indictment found ample evidence the Chinese telecommunications company engaged in racketeering to expand its brand, stole trade secrets from six companies, and committed bank fraud.
Donnelly said Skycom, a Hong Kong company that did business in Iran, “operated as Huawei’s Iranian subsidiary and ultimately stood to benefit, in a roundabout way,” from more than $100 million of money transfers through the U.S. financial system.
The decision comes after Huawei asked a federal judge in Brooklyn in November to dismiss much of the federal indictment. It plead not guilty and sought to dismiss 13 of the 16 counts, calling itself “a prosecutorial target in search of a crime.”
Huawei said there was no proof of a conspiracy, calling the indictment part of the Justice Department’s “ill-founded” China Initiative to prosecute people and companies with ties to China. “The government has approached Huawei as a prosecutorial target in search of a crime,” Huawei in its motion for dismissal.
A trial is scheduled for May 4, 2026, and take a few months.
The case dates back to President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018, when the Justice Department launched its China Initiative to address Beijing’s alleged theft of intellectual property.
At the time, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, whose father founded the company, was detained in Canada for nearly three years before being allowed to return to China. Charges against her were eventually dropped in 2022. That same year, President Joe Biden’s administration scrapped the China Initiative following criticisms it amounted to racial profiling and stilted scientific research.
The U.S. government has restricted Huawei’s access to American technology since 2019, citing national security concerns over Huawei’s denials.
