A racketeering conspiracy trial of Huawei Technologies commenced in New York on Wednesday, with federal prosecutors accusing the Chinese tech company of a litany of crimes, including stealing technology from American companies, abusing the U.S. financial system and helping Iran snoop on its citizens.

Huawei ranks as the world’s largest supplier of equipment for wireless telecommunications networks; however, it is prohibited from selling its gear to U.S. carriers amid concerns that it constitutes a security threat.

Furthermore, it has been blacklisted by other Western allies, among them Canada and Britain.

Taylor Stout, a Department of Justice attorney, opened the government's case by telling the Brooklyn jury that Huawei had committed multiple crimes over two decades.

Defense attorney Brian Heberlig, however, dismissed the accusations, contending that prosecutors were basing their case on a smattering of anecdotes and the bad behavior of a few of Huawei's roughly 200,000 employees in 170 countries, so as to cast the company and three of its subsidiaries as a corrupt criminal enterprise.

"There was no blueprint for crime," Heberlig said, urging jurors to remember that there were "real people whose careers, integrity are on the line in this case."

The first witness prosecutors called was Parham Baheshti, who grew up in Iran but moved to the U.S. to study and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.

Baheshti, who moved back to Iran in 2003 to be closer to his wife's family, testified that he fed secrets to the U.S. government about his dealings with Huawei after learning about the tech giant while working in 2009 for a small but fast-growing company that was bringing the internet to far-flung corners of Iran.

Baheshti said he had been enthusiastic about endeavouring to extend internet access to small Iranian cities, but that he had come to believe that Huawei was not going to assist.

"They appeared utterly indifferent to that," he remarked.

"They were simply pursuing their own agenda."

He said he found it “infuriating” during a meeting with Huawei workers, when he realized that the Chinese company was making a pitch “for analyzing the (Iranian) people and their behavior online.”

Baheshti stated that he departed Iran in 2011 upon being informed that he was the subject of an investigation.

In his opening statement, Heberlig told the jurors they would see through what he described as the prosecution's unreliable witnesses and recognize that "the government's claims don't add up."

He also said they would find that some of the testimony against the company was fueled by "old grudges."

He mocked the prosecutors' intention to present evidence in court showing that a Huawei employee had photographed a competitor's product at a trade show, claiming that the government had failed to mention that Huawei had promptly dismissed the worker for the “foolish act.”

It wasn’t proof of a “companywide conspiracy,” said Heberlig, who credited Huawei’s remarkable growth to its success in engineering, investment, innovation and competition.

Huawei manufactures smartphones and other consumer electronics, yet it has been severed from its other lines of business.

More recently, it has diversified into chipmaking as the artificial intelligence boom drives demand for microprocessors.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration raised national security concerns regarding Huawei and commenced lobbying Western allies against incorporating the company’s products into their next-generation high-speed wireless networks.

The U.S. announced the criminal charges in early 2019 and has since broadened the allegations.

Chinese officials asserted that the United States has engaged in “economic bullying” and improperly invoked national security as a pretext for “oppressing Chinese companies.”