Brooklyn jury will decide whether two decades of Huawei commerce were a racketeering enterprise
The predicate acts are statements made to HSBC and trade secrets taken from six unnamed US companies, which is a template available against any firm that has ever answered a dollar-clearing bank's compliance questions.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Jury selection begins Tuesday morning in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, opening a trial the court expects to occupy the next four to six months.
- The prosecution began with a sealed indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York in August 2018, in the first months of the Justice Department's China Initiative.
- A February 2020 superseding indictment invoked RICO, the statute enacted in 1970 to dismantle the American Mafia, alleging a decades-long conspiracy to steal intellectual property from six unnamed US technology companies.
- The government's earlier lever was CFO Meng Wanzhou, whose September 2021 deferred prosecution agreement carried a four-page admission that she misled a bank about Iran; her charges were dropped in December 2022.
Why it matters
- Who's exposed exposure Every multinational that has answered a compliance question from a dollar-clearing bank has generated the same class of document the government is using as a predicate act, which is what makes this theory portable well beyond Shenzhen.
- What it limits constraint Whatever the charge sheet threatens, the enforceable value of a fine is bounded by assets outside China, so the government's endgame leverage is narrower than the counts suggest.
- What it costs cost Most of the penalty has already been paid before any verdict, in lost chips, lost carrier contracts and lost smartphone share; what remains at stake in Brooklyn is a smaller, marginal amount of cash.
- What it sets up precedent If the enterprise framing survives to a verdict, racketeering becomes an ordinary option for charging export-control and trade-secret conduct. That would reshape how prosecutors build such cases, not just how Huawei's case ends.
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The mechanism worth studying is the aggregation. RICO was written in 1970 to dismantle the American Mafia [8], and what it does in this courtroom is bundle conduct that would otherwise be several separate cases, the trade-secret thefts, the statements made to HSBC and other financial institutions about a Hong Kong shell called Skycom and its Iran business, obstruction, and sanctions counts reaching North Korea, into one enterprise with one pattern [8][3].
The bank-fraud predicate is the generic part. A compliance answer given to a dollar-clearing bank is the kind of document almost every multinational produces, which is why Tech Times argues that for any technology company routing international payments through the US dollar-clearing system, the legal theory in that room matters more than the identity of the defendant [21]. What the material does not show is a second company charged on this template, so the trial tests availability, not practice [19].
Then follow the collectibility. The Justice Department cannot seize assets inside China, so a conviction produces crippling fines on paper and a fight over whatever Huawei still holds on American soil in fact [11], and no figure for those holdings appears in the record here [19]. The sanctions machinery has meanwhile already taken American semiconductors, Western carrier networks and the company's leading position in smartphones across eight years of siege [2]. The price of a conviction and its cash value are different numbers, and the second is the smaller.
The calendar is its own fact: from the sealed August 2018 indictment [12] to a September 2026 jury pool is roughly 97 months [15], the February 2020 racketeering reframing has been pending for 79 of them [16], and a four-to-six-month trial puts a first verdict somewhere around the first quarter of 2027 before anybody files an appeal [17][20].
The same facts support more than one reading. The court could grant part of Huawei's motion to throw out thirteen counts [18] and shrink the enterprise back toward the bank fraud it was in 2018 [3]. A conviction could land as a document that carriers and banks cite when cutting ties rather than as money that moves. Or six months of testimony could end in acquittal or a hung jury, which would be the most expensive available vindication of the company's description of itself as a prosecutorial target in search of a crime [10]. That the government filed a fourth superseding indictment in April 2026 dropping two counts and tweaking its language about victimized banks [14], sixteen-odd months after telling Judge Donnelly that settlement talks had reached impasse [13], reads like a prosecution trimming for trial rather than expanding, or rather, the more interesting version, one narrowing the theory to the counts it believes twelve jurors can hold.
The view here is that the enterprise framing is worth more to the government as a charging precedent than as a recovery, because the recoverable pool sits in the wrong jurisdiction [11]. That view would break under a few conditions: if Huawei actually pays a fine, if a US asset base turns out large enough to make the judgment collectible, or if a second defendant gets charged on the same racketeering theory soon after the verdict.
What to watch
- Whether prosecutors name any of the six unnamed US technology companies in open court.
- Whether Futurewei Technologies, the US subsidiary named in the conspiracy counts, becomes the route to collectible assets.
- Whether Beijing responds during the trial in the pattern it used between 2018 and 2021.
Information, not investment advice. This story is general information about companies and markets, drawn from cited reporting. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security; check the cited sources before acting.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives50
- Confidence60
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers- Builder
- Builder 20%
- Operator
- Operator 42%
- Investor
- Investor 38%
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
The US government will attempt to prove that Huawei Technologies is not merely a corporation that broke the law but a criminal enterprise in the legal sense: a racketeering operation whose global rise was underwritten by systematic theft, fraud and sanctions evasion spanning nearly two decades.
- [2]
The eight-year legal siege has already cost Huawei access to American semiconductors, Western carrier networks and its dominant position in the global smartphone market.
- [3]
The initial charges centred on bank fraud: prosecutors alleged Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom to do business in Iran, then lied to HSBC and other financial institutions about those dealings to avoid triggering sanctions.
- [4]
In December 2018 Canadian border agents, acting on a US warrant, detained Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver International Airport as she changed flights.
- [5]
Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and the company's heir apparent, spent nearly three years under house arrest in a Vancouver mansion while fighting extradition.
- [6]
Meng's detention ignited a three-way diplomatic crisis among the United States, Canada and China, with Beijing retaliating by detaining two Canadian citizens in what critics called "hostage diplomacy".
- [7]
In September 2021 Meng appeared remotely in Brooklyn federal court and entered a deferred prosecution agreement, acknowledging in a four-page statement of facts that she had misled a financial institution about Huawei's compliance with export controls and its Iranian business; the charges against her were formally dropped in December 2022.
- [8]
In February 2020 the Justice Department filed a superseding indictment invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a statute enacted in 1970 to dismantle the American Mafia, accusing Huawei of a decades-long criminal conspiracy to steal intellectual property from six unnamed US technology companies, and adding sanctions violations involving North Korea, obstruction of justice and conspiracy charges implicating Huawei's US subsidiary Futurewei Technologies as well as Skycom.
- [9]
Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker.
- [10]
Huawei has pleaded not guilty to all charges and calls itself "a prosecutorial target in search of a crime".
- [11]
A conviction could invite crippling fines and, because the US Justice Department cannot seize assets inside China, a battle over whatever Huawei holdings remain on American soil.
- [12]
The case originates in a sealed indictment filed in August 2018 in the Eastern District of New York, during the Trump administration's first term and the early months of the Justice Department's China Initiative, which was launched in November 2018.
- [13]
By late 2024, prosecutors told Judge Donnelly in Brooklyn that settlement talks with Huawei had ended at impasse.
- [14]
In April 2026 the government filed a fourth superseding indictment that streamlined the case by dropping two counts and tweaking language about victimized banks, triggering a delay of the trial from June to September.
- [15]
From the sealed August 2018 indictment to the September 2026 start of jury selection is about 97 months, or a little over eight years.
- [16]
The February 2020 racketeering reframing has been pending about 79 months as the trial opens in September 2026.
- [17]
Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday morning in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, which will serve as the venue for the next four to six months.
- [18]
In a motion to dismiss, Huawei asked the court to throw out thirteen of the counts against it.
- [19]
The source material contains no ruling on Huawei's motion to dismiss the thirteen counts, no dollar figure for Huawei assets held on US soil, no figure for potential fines, and no second company charged under the same racketeering theory.
- [20]
A trial opening in September 2026 and running four to six months implies a first verdict no earlier than roughly January to March 2027, before any appeal.
- [21]
For any technology company that routes international payments through the US dollar-clearing system, which is to say almost every technology company on earth, the legal theory at the heart of the prosecution is the most consequential thing in the courtroom.
Sources
3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- apnews.comHuawei Technologies trial set to start in New York | AP News
1 article · September 7, 2026
- cryptopolitan.comHuawei US trial commences over Iran business dealings
1 article · September 8, 2026
- techtimes.comHuawei RICO Trial Opens Tuesday: US Makes Telecom Giant Answer as Criminal Enterprise
1 article · September 7, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Sanctions and export controls
- Racketeering prosecution
- US-China technology dispute
Entities
- Huawei
- U.S. Department of Justice
- Futurewei Technologies
- Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
- HSBC