William Majcher, a retired RCMP officer charged with foreign interference on behalf of China.Supplied
The federal government is refusing to provide full disclosure of the evidence against a former RCMP inspector charged with foreign interference on behalf of China, citing national-security concerns, his defence lawyer says.
The Mounties alleged in July that William Majcher, who has lived and worked in Hong Kong for years, was targeting a wealthy Vancouver real estate entrepreneur named Kevin Sun at the request of China’s Ministry of Public Security. Mr. Majcher faces two charges under the Security of Information Act.
The case, originally set for trial in Quebec, has been moved to British Columbia.
Mr. Majcher’s lawyer, Ian Donaldson, filed a series of disclosure requests in September, seeking all information obtained using the RCMP’s sophisticated spyware, known as ODIT, production orders, CSIS advisory letters, all information between the RCMP and CSIS and the history of Mr. Majcher’s relationship with Canada’s spy service.
Mr. Donaldson said he was served last week on Thursday with notice that the government was invoking Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act to deny Mr. Majcher access to some of this information on national-security grounds.
This means Mr. Donaldson has had to retain a special advocate lawyer, someone approved to handle top-security, national-security cases. The special advocate will seek to obtain the information in closed-door hearings in the Federal Court of Canada.
“I don’t know what it is that the government says they can’t disclose to me,” Mr. Donaldson said in an interview.
He said “another issue has arisen which has to do with some sort of material that may be privileged that has been seized.” Again he doesn’t know what this information involves.
Ryan Carrier, the prosecutor assigned to the case, said in a statement that the Crown always complies with its disclosure obligations but disclosure is subject to a number of recognized legal privileges and rules.
“The Crown does not view these established legal privileges as ‘roadblocks’ to disclosure, but rather an important part of the criminal law that must also be respected,” he said. “These privileges may inure to the benefit of both the Accused and the Crown, for instance solicitor-client privilege is routinely invoked by an Accused over material collected by investigators during a criminal investigation.”
Mr. Donaldson also said the Crown has yet to provide him with 78 judicial authorizations to obtain banking, phone and social-media records in the RCMP investigation of his client. The records were unsealed last month but were still not provided by the Crown to Mr. Donaldson.
In one of those documents, marked top secret, the Mounties raise concerns about Mr. Majcher’s assertions that he was an asset of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service from 2011 to 2015. He also said he self-reported to a CSIS agent in 2018 in Thailand that he was retained by a China-based think tank to help win the release of senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou after she was detained by Canadian authorities on a U.S. extradition warrant.
“These questions, if left unanswered, ultimately threaten the RCMP’s ongoing investigation into Majcher – addressing disclosure obligations and questions as to potential entrapment remain paramount in the viability of any potential future judicial proceeding undertaken by the RCMP and the Public Prosecution Service,” according to the December, 2022, memo from Sergeant Nicholas Ferland.
Mr. Donaldson said he wants to know what CSIS told the RCMP because his client maintains that he was “a good Canadian citizen and liaising with investigative agencies as appropriate on his own volition. What did they find out in response to that? My answer is, I don’t know.”
Mr. Majcher’s long co-operation with CSIS “completely undermines the Crown’s position that he is an underhanded person working against Canada’s interest. In fact, he had been acting in a fashion entirely consistent with Canada’s interest throughout,” Mr. Donaldson said.
The RCMP also allege Mr. Majcher collaborated with another former RCMP officer, Kenneth Marsh, to compel Mr. Sun to co-operate with China, but his alleged co-conspirator has not been charged.
China had obtained an Interpol Red Notice arrest warrant for Mr. Sun in 2015 as he was apparently on a list of 100 fugitives suspected of economic crimes. The arrest warrant was cancelled in 2018 and China gave Mr. Sun a new passport. Mr. Sun’s lawyer, James Carpick, said his client is not a “victim of extortion committed by the Chinese government through its alleged agent Mr. Majcher.”
The RCMP allege China’s settlement with Mr. Sun matches the intended actions of Mr. Majcher, pointing to an e-mail that Mr. Majcher sent to a colleague that talked about his intention to get Mr. Sun to co-operate, saying he could “guarantee him his [Chinese] passport and no jail time.”
Mr. Donaldson said the evidence against his client is thin but he suspects the government will push ahead with the case because of Ottawa’s preoccupation with Chinese foreign interference.
“The theory is that he is acting against Canada’s interest. You have to have proof of that. In fact, the evidence tends to suggest the contrary,” he said.
Mr. Majcher’s case has also affected RCMP Sergeant Peter Merrifield, a former Mountie union vice-president, and retired Vancouver detective Paul McNamara. Both men are friends of Mr. Majcher and lost their security clearances as a result of this relationship.
Without a security clearance, Mr. McNamara lost his job as head of security at the U.S. consulate in Vancouver while Sgt. Merrifield was unable to work on VIP protection in Toronto for dignitaries, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Mr. Merrifield has since had his security clearance reinstated. The two men have filed a $5.5-million lawsuit against CSIS for wrongly linking them to Mr. Majcher, who they believe is also a victim of a spy service that acted with “little or no facts.”
“Every single available investigative tool was used, breaches of my rights and privacy were commonplace, and the complete destruction of my personal character and professional reputation was the result,’ Mr. Merrifield said. “Even though my security classification is reinstated, I am not trusted by my own employer, I am restricted in my duties, I’m not promotable, and I lost my Union Executive role.”
Both men were informed in September that the government has also sought a Section 38 to deny them access to CSIS information on national-security grounds.
“I feel betrayed,” Mr. McNamara said. “My security clearance was revoked with the U.S. State Department for no valid explanation.”