Chinese police officers went missing during high-security Vancouver trip, court hears
Three Beijing officials didn’t show up at a designated spot and were missing for six hours, prompting RCMP to watch airport and border
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RCMP set up a border watch after Chinese police officers on a high-security visit to Vancouver went missing for six hours, an RCMP officer testified on Day 2 of William Majcher’s trial.
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The 14 officials from China’s Ministry of Public Security and Public Security Bureau were here in 2018 to talk to the RCMP about money laundering, market fraud and economic fugitives.
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Supt. Peter Tsui, the RCMP liaison officer in Beijing for four years, told the trial that several RCMP officers were to “escort” the officials to meetings.
“We used the polite term ‘hosted,’” he told the B.C. Supreme Court trial in Vancouver.
The officers were to accompany the Chinese officers the whole time they were in Canada, he said.
The trial, which began Monday before Justice Martha Devlin, is testing the prosecution theory that former RCMP inspector Majcher violated Canada’s Security of Information Act by planning to help the Chinese government repatriate Hongwei (Kevin) Sun, who has lived in Canada as a permanent resident since 2001.
Majcher has pleaded not guilty to the one count he faces.
Beijing had flagged Sun as a suspect in Chinese fraud crimes that it alleged amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars and said he had invested heavily in Vancouver real estate. China, through Interpol, had issued a “red notice” to other countries for his arrest.
Tsui told court it took the RCMP months to get security clearance for the Chinese police visit in 2018, including having to lobby for a visa for some of the officials.
“We would have to ensure that when they’re in Canada, that we would be looking after them,” he said.
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When the 14 officials travelled from Toronto to Vancouver for the second leg of the trip, three members didn’t show up at a designated meeting place, he said.
“We had no idea where they went, and we had to put safeguards in place at the borders and at the airport, because there’s certain individuals in Vancouver that we were concerned about being returned” to China.
He said the incident “affected the trust between Canada and China.”
Tsui also said despite China’s allegations, the RCMP would always insist on seeing evidence in English before it would arrest a suspect. Mounties would also be present at police interviews in Canada by Chinese police of those suspected of crimes in China to ensure their Charter rights weren’t violated and they weren’t intimidated or coerced during questioning, he said.
Tsui also testified there was intelligence from overseas colleagues that Chinese police would contact individuals in Canada and other countries they wanted to repatriate and would hire law firms and private investigators to help.
“We don’t have 100 per cent evidence, but we were advised that they were contacting the subjects and also pressuring their their families, stealing assets and freezing bank accounts” in China, he said.
Tsui also told court that Canada rejected China’s request in 2017 to establish two more Chinese liaison officers, both in Vancouver, telling it any dealings would have to go through China’s liaison officers in Ottawa and not through a satellite office. Canada also had two liaison officers in Beijing.
Tsui said that denial had “really significant” impact on the relationship between the two countries, and one of their senior officials issued a “direct rebuke” to the RCMP, saying it would affect the police relationship between the two countries.
The second significant impact on the relationship happened with the 2018 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei, on suspicion of fraud charges at the request of the U.S. She spent three years under house arrest in Vancouver before being released.
Majcher’s trial continues.
