Meng Wanzhou - days of house arrest in Vancouver

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of China's Huawei, is on bail awaiting her fate in a $4.2 million mansion in Vancouver, Canada. She gets into a black SUV and freely roams the city's shops and restaurants, according toSCMP.

Outside, tourists stopped to take selfies of Meng’s home, which is near a 2.5-square-mile park overlooking the Pacific Ocean. To be released on bail, Meng must wear a GPS ankle tracker, abide by a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., and be under 24-hour surveillance by a private security company, Lions Gate Group.

Lions Gate's job is to ensure that Meng Wanzhou does not violate the conditions of her bail. Meng Wanzhou has to pay a lot of money for this job, including two bodyguards who follow her around and a personal driver.

“If I were on The Price Is Right, I would guess she was paying $7,000 a day,” or more than $2.5 million a year, said Nicholas Casale, a former police officer.

During the time after curfew, Meng Wanzhou was free to go out. The 46-year-old woman wore a purple Hermes scarf and carried a Bottega Veneta bag when she first appeared to report to her supervisor in Vancouver on December 12, 2018.

Meng Wanzhou’s other $16.3 million mansion in one of Vancouver’s busiest neighborhoods is also being renovated. A truck carrying custom-made luxury wardrobes was recently parked outside the mansion. It’s possible that Meng Wanzhou will move into this mansion. If so, Meng is just two blocks from the U.S. consulate general’s residence.

Casale said Manh's bail conditions were quite unusual, because normally, the subject would be restricted from going out as well as from communicating.

"You can't go out to dinner or go shopping," Casale said.

Meng’s conditions contrast with those of another high-profile business executive, Carlos Ghosn, the former chairman of Nissan Motor Co., who is being held in a Tokyo jail. He was seen in handcuffs, wearing plastic slippers and a chain around his waist during his trial last week. Meng’s conditions are also better than those of two Canadians detained in China, who are said to have been denied access to lawyers, a claim Beijing denies.

Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada at the request of the United States, which wants to extradite her on charges of violating sanctions against Iran. Nine days after Meng's December 1, 2018, arrest at Vancouver airport, China detained two Canadians on national security grounds. Earlier this week, a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling.

It’s hard to get a sense of Meng’s daily life these days. Bodyguards are responsible for shielding her from prying eyes. When Bloomberg News journalists parked on the street near Meng’s home last week, one bodyguard took photos of the license plate while another drove his white SUV to block their car. When Meng emerged from her home, wearing a Lululemon jacket, the bodyguard began accusing the reporters of damaging his car before admitting he had intentionally blocked them.

It is not yet clear how the Meng Wanzhou case will be resolved. However, the extradition process could take months or even years, and the odds are high that Meng Wanzhou will be extradited, with the deadline for the US to make an extradition request at the end of January and the Canadian Minister of Justice to make a decision.

“The likelihood of extradition in this case is high,” said Robert Currie, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and an expert on international law.

During this time, Meng Wanzhou wants to continue her doctorate in business administration at the University of British Columbia near her home. The university is receiving $2.26 million from Huawei to fund research on 5G - the next-generation mobile network technology that the US wants to prevent Huawei from developing.

“I have worked hard for 25 years,” Meng Wanzhou told her lawyer during her bail hearing last month. “If I am released, my only and simple goal is to spend time with my husband and daughter. For many years, I have not had time to read novels.”