Huawei Technologies went on trial in Brooklyn federal court on criminal racketeering charges, with prosecutors accusing the Chinese telecom giant of a two-decade scheme involving bank fraud, wire fraud, and trade secret theft. The company has pleaded not guilty to all 14 counts in a case spanning years of legal wrangling.
Racketeering Charges and the Brooklyn Courtroom
The high-stakes criminal case opened with jury selection before U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York. The Shenzhen-based company has pleaded not guilty to all 14 counts, which encompass bank fraud, wire fraud, trade secret theft, and racketeering allegations dating back to 1999.
During the opening of the government’s case, Taylor Stout, a Department of Justice attorney, told the Brooklyn jury that the world’s biggest supplier of gear for wireless telecom networks engaged in a litany of crimes over two decades. Prosecutors allege that the corporation abused the U.S. financial system, stole technology from American companies, and utilized a Hong Kong shell company named Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. Additional allegations claim that Huawei-linked surveillance gear helped Iran spy on protesters and that the firm conducted business in North Korea despite U.S. sanctions.
Judge Donnelly instructed potential jurors to remain as fair and impartial as possible, emphasizing that China and the Communist Party were not on trial and that ongoing geopolitical conflicts should not sway their judgment. Just days before opening arguments, prosecutors trimmed the indictment by dropping two export-control counts under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and pulling a trade-secret theft predicate involving Motorola.
Defense Arguments and Witness Testimony
Defense attorney Brian Heberlig pushed back against the sweeping government narrative, arguing that federal prosecutors constructed their case around isolated anecdotes and minor missteps by a small fraction of the company’s roughly 200,000 employees spread across 170 countries. Heberlig maintained that Huawei’s remarkable rise stemmed from legitimate engineering, innovation, and competition.
“There was no blueprint for crime.”
Brian Heberlig, defense attorney
The defense team dismissed the prosecution’s reliance on what they termed unreliable witnesses motivated by old grudges. Heberlig specifically pointed to government plans to introduce evidence that a Huawei employee photographed a rival company’s product at a trade show, noting that the enterprise promptly fired the worker for the foolish act rather than orchestrating a widespread corporate conspiracy.
The prosecution’s first witness, Parham Baheshti, offered detailed testimony regarding his interactions with the firm. Baheshti, a U.S. citizen who worked in 2009 for a company bringing internet access to rural parts of Iran, told the court he grew infuriated during a meeting when he realized Huawei representatives were pitching technology for analyzing the Iranian people and their behavior online. Baheshti testified that he subsequently fed secrets to the U.S. government regarding his dealings with the tech giant before leaving Iran in 2011.
Corporate Realities and the Shadow of Past Litigation
While the criminal trial focuses squarely on Huawei as a corporate entity, the proceedings unfold against a backdrop of related historical actions. The case is distinct from the legal battle surrounding Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of the company’s founder. Meng was arrested in Canada in 2018 on a U.S. extradition request over allegations of misleading HSBC Bank regarding Skycom dealings. Following a 2021 prisoner swap and a deferred prosecution agreement, all U.S. criminal fraud charges against her were formally dismissed in December 2022, removing her as a co-defendant.
Other specific intellectual property disputes remain part of the broader record, including a 2013 incident where a Huawei engineer photographed and removed a robotic arm from a T-Mobile laboratory in Bellevue, Washington. That testing robot, nicknamed Tappy, generated a civil verdict awarding T-Mobile $4.8 million in 2017. Meanwhile, Chinese officials have characterized the U.S. prosecution as economic bullying driven by national security pretenses to suppress competing enterprises.
Outside the Brooklyn courtroom, the corporate entity faces persistent regulatory containment. Western allies, including Canada and Britain, have blacklisted the tech giant from next-generation wireless networks, and U.S. authorities continue to block access to American processor chips. Domestic telecom infrastructure is also undergoing forced removal of foreign hardware; the Federal Communications Commission reported that 53 out of 126 funded projects under the Rip and Replace program had permanently purged Huawei and ZTE equipment by June 2026, supported by congressional authorizations allowing the agency to borrow up to $3.08 billion.
