A court granted a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), retired officer William Majcher, bail on Wednesday after being charged with breaking Canada’s Security of Information Act through deals to aid communist China in persecuting people abroad.
Majcher served 22 years with the RCMP and participated in high-stakes undercover operations the Globe and Mail reported this week, including infiltrating a Colombian drug cartel. Following his retirement, Majcher moved to Hong Kong and worked at an asset recovery company that aided corporations in retrieving money or other property owed to them. Majcher openly described himself as an “economic mercenary” and “hired gun” in a 2019 interview but insisted that he only helped clients “as long as we’re doing everything lawfully and properly.”
Majcher’s case follows months of investigations, by both law enforcement and independent entities, into China’s illicit international operations to persecute suspected dissidents under the guise of capturing alleged fugitives. The Chinese Communist Party openly engages in these activities under “Operation Fox Hunt,” a law enforcement program that Beijing claims is meant to fight “corruption” and capture former officials and white collar criminals. In reality, “Operation Fox Hunt” consists of Chinese officials and associates abroad harassing, threatening, and illegally coercing individuals to return to China, where they are disappeared into the secretive and arbitrary Chinese penal system with no significant legal defense or other due process.
In September, the NGO Safeguard Defenders revealed that extensive research found China operating dozens of illegal police stations on the soils of other countries, a large number of them in Canada and America, used to forcibly repatriate individuals who the Communist Party considered a threat. Many targets were believed to be opponents of the Communist Party or members of persecuted groups such as Tibetans and Uyghurs. China insisted the illegal police stations were “service centers” used to renew drivers’ licenses and other benign services in light of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic limiting travel.
Canada has also faced months of political intrigue surrounding accusations of inappropriate Chinese influence in elections, in particular financing apparently coming from China and benefitting the ruling leftist Liberal Party and the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation. Radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose family has longstanding ideological and business ties to communist China, has denied any inproprieties.
The RCMP announced last week that it had arrested Majcher on allegations that he “contributed to the Chinese government’s efforts to identify and intimidate an individual outside the scope of Canadian law.” Canadian officers have not offered details on who Majcher reportedly helped intimidate or how he did so, stating only that Majcher stood accused of violating the Security of Information Act by engaging in “preparatory acts for the benefit of a foreign entity.” Majcher reportedly faces two charges and a potential maximum sentence of four years in prison.
“We believe the facts of the case will show that he contributed to the Chinese government’s effort to identify and intimidate an individual. In that sense, we do believe that he was helping the Chinese government,” RCMP Inspector David Beaudoin said last week. Beaudoin suggested that Majcher committed the alleged crimes within Canada.
The RCMP accused Majcher in a statement of having “used his knowledge and his extensive network of contacts in Canada to obtain intelligence or services to benefit the People’s Republic of China.“
The Global and Mail noted that RCMP officers indicated that more arrests related to Majcher’s alleged activities were possible in the future as authorities did not consider the investigation concluded.
“The Security of Information Act is serious business,” prosecutor Marc Cigana told reporters, according to the CBC. “Any offence under the act is serious and involves national security.”
The CBC further claimed, citing an anonymous source, that the FBI was “interested” in the ongoing investigation.
The investigation reportedly began in 2021. Majcher reportedly moved to Hong Kong after his RCMP retirement in 2007 and founded an investigative firm using his police skills to help corporations retrieve money. He described his work in detail in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 2019 for a project that described those conducting his sort of work as “bounty hunters.”
“As long as the claim is valid and as long as we’re doing everything lawfully and properly, I’m a hired gun to help either large corporates or governments to get back what is rightfully theirs,” he said.
“I have a commercial relationship with entities that are in themselves associated in some form or another with policing authorities in China,” Majcher admitted at the time. “And a big part of their mandate is focused on economic crime, financial crime, money laundering. We know how to operate more clearly I think than a country like China or personnel from China in our own jurisdictions. We have a familiarity.”
Canada’s CTV News suggested, citing anonymous “security experts,” that Majcher may have been working under “Operation Fox Hunt,” the Chinese project to repatriate individuals considered a threat to the Communist Party.
“Created in 2014, Fox Hunt and its later iteration, Sky Net, targeted Chinese nationals living abroad,” CTV explained. “Under the program, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would recruit police officers, private investigators and lawyers in foreign countries to help track down fugitives suspected of financial crimes and bring them back to China to face prosecution.”
Human rights activists and journalists have compiled years of evidence indicating that “Operation Fox Hunt”‘s targets were more than allegedly corrupt businessmen, but a large number of dissidents or members of persecuted groups. Beijing claims it has repatriated 12,000 people between 2014, when the operation was launched, and October. Beyond human rights groups, Public Safety Canada, the federal safety agency, accused China of using the operation in 2021 to “silence dissent, pressure political opponents and instill a general fear of state power on Canadian soil.”
Chinese infiltration of Canadian politics and its law enforcement system has become a growing problem for Trudeau, whose father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, wrote a book praising mass murder Mao Zedong following his visit to China in 1960, during the bloodbath of the Great Leap Forward. As New York Times best-selling author and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer detailed in his 2022 book Red-Handed, Pierre Trudeau also profited significantly through work helping companies build business ties to China prior to becoming prime minister.
Justin Trudeau has faced multiple Chinese influence scandals. In 2016, the Globe and Mail revealed that Trudeau had attended a fundraiser with Chinese businessmen prior to one of those individuals, Zhang Bin, donating to the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation. Reports this year indicated that Canadian intelligence officials had reason to believe that Communist Party diplomats instructed Zhang to up to a million Canadian dollars to the foundation to buy influence.
The Trudeau Foundation announced it would return the money in March, seven years after the scandal began. A month later, the entire board of directors of the Foundation resigned, citing “the political climate surrounding a donation received by the Foundation in 2016.”
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