The deal allowing Meng Wanzhou to return home to China (The Guardian) nearly three years after her arrest will come as a relief to all the participants in a saga that rapidly turned from a narrow legal dispute into an escalating geopolitical battle.
Donald Trump made the case explicitly political by saying he would intervene to drop the charges if he thought it would help US-China trade negotiations.
It was highly unusual for the prosecution to be directed at the chief finance officer personally and not at the corporation. Last year, Airbus agreed to pay $4bn in penalties to resolve a bribery case. In 2015, Deutsche Bank was fined $258m for violating Iran- and Syria-related sanctions. But no executives were detained in either case.
Indeed, at a hearing in August, the judge in the case said that the case against Meng seemed very unusual. No one lost money, the allegations were several years old, and the intended victim, a global bank, knew the truth even as it was allegedly being lied to.
Heather Holmes, associate chief justice, asked: “Isn’t it unusual that one will see a fraud case with no actual harm many years later? And one in which the alleged victim, a large institution, appears to have had numerous people within the institution who had all the facts that are now said to be misrepresented?”
Beijing denies detaining the Canadians in retaliation for Ms Meng’s arrest. But critics have accused China of using them as political bargaining chips.