The thing I'm trying to figure out is how:
"There's no cheaters and all accusations of cheating are baseless."
"People have been banned for cheating"
Both of these statements can't be true.
If you hack (mod your aircraft/vehicle attribute values) in Aces High, the modded values get stored in the plane's coded properties, which are visible to everyone else's clients. It can't be hidden due to how the game and server interacts. Because it's attached to your aircraft/vehicle, it can be recorded by anyone recording your aircraft using the AH film recorder. Ergo, if there is cheating, it can easily be detected by recording AHF and sending it to Hitech.
This is why Hitech always requests AHF film in such accusations.
I know of two players who actually got banned for legitimate hacking: xPoisonx and BluBerry
xPoisonx did it once as a way to go out in a blaze of whatever. He was flying around at insane speeds, dropping infinite bombs, etc.
BluBerry got banned for enabling and using the LCGS in the Main Arenas.
Both were detected by AHF film being sent to Hitech.