Meng Wanzhou Biography
Meng Wanzhou is a Chinese business executive who serves as the deputy chair of the board and chief financial officer (CFO) of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., which was founded by her father, Ren Zhengfei.
How old is Meng Wanzhou? – Age
She is 50 years old as of 13 February 2022. She was born in 1972 in Chengdu, China.
Meng Wanzhou Family – Education
She is Ren Zhengfei’s daughter from his first marriage to Meng Jun. Meng’s mother is Ren Zhengfei’s first wife, Meng Jun, the daughter of Meng Dongbo, a former deputy secretary of the East China Military and Administrative Committees, and the deputy governor of Sichuan Province. Ren Ping (formerly Meng Ping), her younger brother, also works for Huawei. Ren Zhengfei married Yao Ling after divorcing Meng Jun, with whom he had another daughter, Annabel Yao, who is 25 years younger than Meng.
In November 2018, Annabel Yao made a high-profile debut at Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris. When she was 16, she took her mother’s surname. She worked for China Construction Bank for a year after graduating from college in 1992 before joining Huawei, a startup founded by her father, as a secretary. In 1997, she graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a master’s degree in accounting. She relocated to Vancouver, Canada, in 2001 and obtained permanent residency, but her Confirmation of Permanent Residence expired in 2009. Meng has also had permanent residency in Hong Kong since at least 2011.
Meng Wanzhou Husband
Meng married businessman Liu Xiaozong (), who had previously worked for Huawei for ten years, in 2007, and the couple has a daughter. Meng has three sons from a previous marriage as well. Meng and her husband are the owners of two multimillion-dollar homes in Vancouver, British Columbia. Meng was a permanent resident of Canada from 2001 to 2009.
Why is Meng Wanzhou Detained?
She was arrested at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 on suspicion of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud in order to avoid US sanctions against Iran. Meng was personally indicted by the US Department of Justice on charges of stealing trade secrets on February 13, 2020. The first stage of Meng’s extradition hearing began on January 20, 2020, and ended on May 27, 2020, when a BC Court ordered the extradition to proceed. In August 2021, the extradition judge questioned the case’s regularity and expressed great difficulty understanding how the US presented evidence that supported their criminal allegation.
Is Meng Wanzhou Released?
Her legal case had been playing out publicly in Canada for three years by the time she was released on September 24, 2021, and a Canadian judge was about to announce whether the US extradition request would be granted. The US Department of Justice and Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei, have reached a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve their case against her by deferring criminal charges and withdrawing their extradition request. Meng left Vancouver the same day on a Chinese government-arranged Air China charter flight bound for Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, after serving over 1000 days in the city as part of her bail condition.
Meng Wanzhou Powerpoint
Ms. Meng used the PowerPoint at a meeting with the bank HSBC on August 22, 2013, and it is being used as key evidence against her. Reuters news reports in recent months had raised doubts about whether Hong Kong-based firm Skycom had broken trade sanctions against Iran. The question was whether Skycom, a telecoms equipment vendor, was simply a Huawei business partner or a front for the company to hide its activities in Iran.
According to the US, Ms. Meng misled HSBC about the true nature of Huawei’s relationship with Skycom during the meeting (the one with the PowerPoint presentation), putting the bank at risk of violating Iran sanctions. Her lawyers claimed that the US misled the court, particularly in regards to the PowerPoint, by omitting key information on two slides that showed HSBC was not in the dark about the true nature of the Skycom/Huawei relationship.
Meng Wanzhou Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $1.5 Million.
Meng Wanzhou Career
She said her career took off after she returned to Huawei in 1998 to work in the finance department, in an interview with the Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald. She has held positions such as head of international accounting, Huawei Hong Kong’s chief financial officer (CFO), and director of the Accounting Management Department.
Meng was already listed as Huawei’s CFO when the company’s top executives were first published in 2011. She was named one of the four vice chairpersons of the board in March 2018, fueling speculation that she was being groomed to succeed her father. Ren, on the other hand, has denied such claims, telling Sina Tech that “none of my family members possess [suitable] qualities” and that “none of my family members will ever be included in the succession sequence.”
Meng is the deputy chairwoman and CFO of Huawei, China’s largest privately held company with 180,000 employees, as of December 2018. Meng was ranked 8th in Forbes’ 2017 list of China’s Outstanding Businesswomen, while Huawei chairwoman Sun Yafang (who stepped down in March 2018) was ranked second.
Video clips of Meng being greeted by Huawei employees at the Shenzhen headquarters circulated on October 25, 2021, prompting confirmation that Meng had resumed work following a 21-day COVID-19 quarantine. On the same day, she also celebrated her father’s 77th birthday.