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The RCMP has decided to launch an investigation to determine who sent forged government documents to the Muslim Association of Canada, days after the federal police force said the community organization should instead pursue the matter with local authorities.
The Mounties came under criticism from Muslim groups and the office of Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino on Wednesday after they declined to investigate the fake documents, which falsely suggest the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency are using paid informants to build a terrorist-funding case against MAC, a charity that operates mosques, schools and community centres across the country.
Late Thursday afternoon, the RCMP issued a statement to The Globe and Mail, saying it takes the concerns of the Muslim community seriously.
“The RCMP recognizes that the members of the Muslim Association are the victims in this case and it is important that we support them. The RCMP takes this matter seriously. As we are currently investigating this matter, we cannot provide any further comments,” said Charlotte Hibbard, acting director of RCMP media relations.
A day earlier, on Wednesday, Mr. Mendicino’s office had said the government has “zero tolerance for any form of Islamophobia” and that the minister expected the RCMP to “take this seriously and take appropriate action when necessary.”
Earlier in the week, however, the RCMP told MAC to file reports with local police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, even though the documents include faked RCMP search warrants and phony records of payments to informants. The CRA was sufficiently concerned about the forgeries that it referred the matter to the RCMP to investigate.
Ms. Hibbard said the RCMP is still recommending MAC report the matter to local police and the anti-fraud centre while the force conducts a separate investigation. She confirmed The Globe and Mail’s reporting that the RCMP search warrants and other documents are not authentic.
MAC’s president in charge of strategy, Sharaf Sharafeldin, said MAC is pleased the RCMP statement recognizes the impact the controversy has had on the Muslim community. He said the organization awaits the outcome of the investigation.
Although the evidence that the documents are fake is overwhelming, MAC remains skeptical that they didn’t originate inside the government. “MAC reiterates that the responsibility lies with the government to determine if any of the documents or their contents are genuine, which can be only be done after a thorough, transparent and independent investigation,” Mr. Sharafeldin added.
Last week, after The Globe and Mail reported on the forged files, Mr. Mendicino told reporters the RCMP had assured him they would find out what had happened. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “very concerned about these reports of Islamophobic forged documents,” and did not rule out an independent investigation.
MAC began receiving the forged documents from an anonymous sender more than a year ago. The records falsely suggest that law enforcement and tax collection authorities are trying to entrap the organization by creating the appearance that it is funnelling money to extremist groups.
The fake records make it seem as if the charity is riddled with informants supplying the RCMP and the CRA with details of its operations. A purported Mountie “Informant Manifest” lists six informants who are supposedly working with the National Security Joint Operations Centre, as well as 18 “secondary asset” informants.
In total, the trove of documents amounts to hundreds of pages sent in 11 packages from April, 2021, to late November of this year. In addition to the fake search warrants and phony records of SWIFT money transfer payments to informants, the documents include printouts that look like internal government e-mails between RCMP personnel and CRA investigators. The CRA, the RCMP and the Bank of Canada have all said the documents are fake, and the supposed authors of some of the e-mails have sworn in affidavits that they didn’t write them.
The purported SWIFT transfers show 13 payments into offshore bank accounts, supposedly for the benefit of three informants. All but one list the Bank of Canada as the sender. The documents show the equivalent of more than $320,000 being deposited into accounts in the British dependency of Guernsey.
The forged records sent to MAC also portray the CRA as being under pressure from its leadership to nail the Muslim charity for wrongdoing, and the documents make investigators appear willing to bend or break the rules in order to do so.
Relations between the Muslim organization and the CRA have been fraught for years. Since 2015, the tax agency has been conducting a very real audit of MAC’s activities as a registered charity, a possible prelude to revoking its charitable status. That investigation is unrelated to any accusations of terrorist funding.
MAC has called this continuing CRA audit an “existential threat,” because losing charitable status would make it harder for the organization to raise money to run mosques and schools, as its donors would not be eligible for tax breaks.
It mounted a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge against the CRA in April to stop the audit, arguing the agency is tainted by Islamophobia and systemic bias toward Muslim Canadians. But MAC has said the Charter challenge stands on its own merits, and that these documents have no bearing on its allegations against the tax agency.