A US judge has rejected Huawei’s bid to dismiss most federal criminal charges against it over alleged technology theft and sanctions violations, meaning the Chinese tech giant must face trial.

US District Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn ruled that the 16-count US indictment contained sufficient allegations that Huawei stole trade secrets from six US companies and committed bank fraud.

The US alleges Huawei controlled Skycom, a Hong Kong company that did business in Iran in violation of US sanctions.

Bank fraud

Huawei misled banks over its dealings in Iran, according to the indictment.

Donnelly found that prosecutors delivered satisfactory allegations that Skycom operated as Huawei’s Iranian subsidiary and stood to benefit from more than $100 million (£72.8m) of money transfers through the US financial system.

Huawei’s trial was originally scheduled for January 2026 and has been pushed back to 4 May, 2026.

In a filing last November Huawei called for 13 of the 16 counts to be dropped, saying they were part of the US Justice Department’s “ill-founded” China Initiative created in 2018 to prosecute people and companies linked to China over alleged theft of trade secrets.

It said several of the charges concerned activities outside the US and that the bank fraud allegations rest on a theory of fraud that was rejected by the US Supreme Court in 2023.

“The government has approached Huawei as a prosecutorial target in search of a crime,” Huawei said at the time. The company has pleaded not guilty.

China Initiative

The criminal case against Huawei began in 2018, the same year that the Justice Department launched the China Initiative.

The initiative was scrapped in 2022 when the Biden administration said it amounted to racial profiling and had a chilling effect on scientific research.

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was held under house arrest in Canada for nearly three years under charges relating to the case before being allowed to return to China under the Biden administration in 2021.

The charges against her were dropped the following year.