Trial of ex-Mountie and accused China mercenary begins

William Majcher speaks to CTV News in an exclusive interview. (Chris Gargus)

VANCOUVER – In his policing career, William Majcher infiltrated terror groups and drug cartels and was put on an assassin’s hit list.

With a university degree in commerce, the former Mountie often went undercover as an expert who could help criminals launder their money.

In 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) acting on information from Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), issued a national espionage alert warning all its members about Majcher.

He had retired 14 years earlier from the force and moved to Hong Kong, but investigators believed he had been turned by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In July 2023, Majcher came back to Canada “voluntarily” to clear his name, instead he was arrested when he landed at Vancouver International Airport.

The former Mountie faces one charge under the Security of Information Act, a law used to prosecute foreign interference.

The 63-year-old is accused of engaging in “preparatory acts,” such as planning to use threats and violence to pressure a Chinese national Hongwei “Kevin” Sun to return to China to face punishment for alleged fraud.

After waiting nearly three years, Majcher’s trial will be heard in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver. The case will be tried in front of Justice Martha Devlin and is scheduled for one week.

Judge-alone trial

“Bill has been stuck in Canada. He’s been separated from his family and children. And his position has always been – ‘I’m not guilty. I’m innocent and I want to have my day in court,’” Ian Donaldson, Majcher’s defence lawyer said, adding that his client has elected for a judge alone trial.

Investigators believe Majcher participated in China’s notorious Operation Fox Hunt, Sky Net and anti-corruption campaigns launched by President Xi Jinping. Under the program, the PRC would recruit police officers, private investigators and lawyers in foreign countries to help track down fugitives suspected of financial crimes. Human rights group say Fox Hunt was also a guise used by Beijing to find and silence its critics in the Chinese diaspora.

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For the past few months, the prosecution and the defence have been arguing over what evidence can be presented in court. Since Majcher has elected for trial by judge alone, several preliminary rulings have been made public which gives a sense of the defence strategy and of the strength of the crown’s case.

“I’m a patriot not a traitor,” Majcher previously said in an exclusive interview with CTV News. “I challenge almost anybody who be watching this to put themselves at the kind of risks that I’ve put for my country and for our allies.”

FBI Emails

After he retired from policing, Majcher moved to Hong Kong where he founded a company, EMIDR, which specialized in helping Chinese firms recover stolen assets. Beijing was also one of his clients.

The RCMP began investigating Majcher in 2021 under Project Severo. The crux of the Crown’s case against Majcher rests on an email from 2017, obtained by the F.B.I. and provided to the RCMP in 2023.

In the 2017 email exchange with Ross Gaffney, EMIDR’s Director of the Americas – Majcher, references negotiations to establish terms of engagement to help recover part of a RMB 2.9 billion fraud against a bank in China’s Jilin Province.

According to court documents, the email states the “fraudster is now a major real estate mogul in Vancouver” with over $100 million in assets.

Majcher writes that the Chinese Police are close to issuing a global arrest warrant, and that he hopes to get a copy so that “we can impress upon the crook that we hold the keys to his future.”

The presumed Vancouver target, Kevin Sun, is not identified in the email.

“There’s no genuine evidence that anyone was after Kevin Sun,” says Donaldson, Majcher’s lawyer.

In the same message to Gaffney, Majcher talks about trying to locate two women in California to establish their assets so that China’s Public Security Bureau can make decision about whether to pursue them for asset recovery. He says the Chinese government wants EMIDR to teach and train their police on how to use “covert methodologies” to investigate international financial crime.

Majcher writes that he and another colleague are developing a “Concept Paper” for the Chinese to establish a “storefront” to run money laundering sting operations. The stings would be initiated on a government-to-government basis under a mutual legal assistance treaty.

Donaldson says the email doesn’t show anything nefarious only that Majcher was “earning a living.”

“His career has been about combatting money laundering. It has nothing to do with Fox Hunt or Sky Net.”

An unconstitutional arrest

Donaldson was unable to persuade Justice Devlin that the FBI emails should not be entered into evidence, however the defence was successful in arguing that Majcher’s warrantless arrest at the airport was unconstitutional.

The lead investigator on Project Severo was Staff Sergeant Nicolas Ferland, a member of the INSET team which probes terrorism cases and foreign interference. On July 16, 2023, Ferland was notified by CBSA that Majcher would arrive in Canada from Hong Kong within two days. During the preliminary trial, Ferland testified that the investigation was “a bit premature” yet the team decided to arrest Majcher without a warrant.

Justice Devlin found that when Majcher arrived at Vancouver International, the RCMP did not have probable grounds to arrest him. At that time, investigators knew that Kevin Sun was wanted for financial crimes in China and that he had purchased large amounts of real estate in Canada.

They also knew that one of Majcher’s associates in Vancouver, Kim Marsh, also a former Mountie, wanted to investigate Sun.

Fourteen RCMP officers would carry out a search warrant at Marsh’s home which the judge also found was invalid. Marsh was initially labelled a co-conspirator in the case, but has never been charged. He’s now become a Crown witness.

Justice Devlin also slammed the INSET team for relying on second-hand information from an Australian television documentary in which Majcher was featured, instead of doing its own interviews.

In the documentary Majcher admitted to being an “economic mercenary” who worked with the Chinese government.

But the judge says the narrative put forward by Ferland at that time “leaves too many gaps” to reasonably infer that Majcher had “any involvement with Mr. Sun.”

“The investigation simply had not collected sufficient credible, and compelling information,” stated Justice Devlin in her ruling.

“It follows that Mr. Majcher’s warrantless arrest was unlawful. I find that his arrest on July 18, 2023, violated his right not to be arbitrarily detained.”

Court documents also reveal that Majcher, after leaving the RCMP, did provide intelligence to CSIS while he was living in Asia.

Majcher believes he first came under suspicion after the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou which triggered China’s retaliatory detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. In 2019, he self-reported to CSIS that he had been hired by a Chinese think tank to research the extradition process in the Wanzhou case.

Majcher says he offered to provide intelligence on the Chinese, instead he was accused of betraying Canada.

His lawyer, Ian Donaldson accuses the Mounties of “tunnel vision.”

“Bill is a patriot, but when a police force gets an idea firmly embedded in their minds – they follow that track and ignore all sorts of off-ramps. Some call this tunnel vision.”