William Majcher, a retired RCMP officer charged with overseas interference, is due again in court docket at present. Right here’s what we all know in regards to the accused.
Majcher, 60, was arrested Thursday in Vancouver. Authorities allege he “used his information and his intensive community of contacts in Canada to acquire intelligence or providers to profit the Individuals’s Republic of China,” says an RCMP information launch.
The discharge additionally stated Majcher allegedly “contributed to the Chinese language authorities’s efforts to establish and intimidate a person outdoors the scope of Canadian legislation.” Each alleged offences fall underneath the Safety of Data Act.
An RCMP investigator informed CBC the alleged incidents occurred between 2014 and 2019. The fees usually are not associated to election interference.
Majcher first appeared in court docket in Longueuil, Que. by video convention on Friday. He’ll seem once more Tuesday to set a date for a bail listening to.
I needed some journey and pleasure in my life.William Majcher speaking about becoming a member of the RCMP
In a speech to Hong Kong’s International Correspondents’ Membership in 2014, Majcher described rising up in a “typical Canadian middle-class household.” He graduated from St. Mary’s College in Halifax with a commerce diploma in 1984, in response to the web site of one of many firms he manages.
In his 2014 speech, he stated he moved to London, U.Ok. to work as a bond dealer however returned to Canada to affix the RCMP a yr later. Majcher stated he’d needed to be a Mountie since he was a younger boy.
“I needed some journey and pleasure in my life,” he stated.
Majcher’s LinkedIn web page says he labored on quite a few cash laundering investigations as a covert operator whereas serving with the RCMP. He was with the power from 1985 to 2007.
In an affidavit he filed in an unrelated case earlier than the Supreme Court docket in 2017, Majcher wrote that he’d spent most of his profession “infiltrating and surveilling main organized crime and cash laundering operations in Canada, the USA and elsewhere abroad.” The affidavit says he’s acquired letters of commendation from the RCMP, the FBI and different police businesses.
RCMP Insp. David Beaudoin informed CBC that Majcher spent most of his RCMP profession in B.C. and spent a while in Ottawa.
The 2017 affidavit additionally says Majcher labored undercover on the Winnipeg Commodity Alternate.
Beaudoin stated the investigation and court docket proceedings are going down in Quebec as a result of Majcher didn’t work for the power in that province.
A former RCMP officer has been charged with overseas interference. He allegedly helped the Chinese language authorities unlawfully intimidate somebody residing in Canada and obtained intelligence or providers to profit China, the RCMP stated.
In 2006 Majcher moved to Hong Kong, the place he has been working as a threat evaluation adviser for the funding banking sector, in response to his LinkedIn profile.
The 2017 affidavit says that since his retirement from the RCMP, Majcher has “assisted a number of authorities businesses” on quite a few points, together with asset restoration and cash laundering.
Based on his profile on a Hong Kong-based audio system web site, Majcher has represented “quite a few Chinese language state-owned and non-state owned enterprise shoppers.”
In 2019, Majcher appeared earlier than a U.Ok. all-party parliamentary group wanting into cyber safety. Based on the minutes of that assembly, Majcher indicated that the Chinese language authorities is one in every of his “main shoppers” and he was working to assist get better $1.2 trillion US in funds acquired by fraud.
In 2016, Majcher based a company threat agency referred to as EMIDR. The corporate’s web site lists state-sponsored espionage, intelligence gathering and cash laundering as a few of its areas of experience. It additionally says the agency focuses on asset restoration.
An Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) article from 2019 stated Majcher was a part of Venture Dragon, a Chinese language operation to get better cash allegedly siphoned in another country illegally.
Within the article, Majcher is quoted as saying he’s a “employed gun” for governments and companies trying to “get again what’s rightfully theirs.”
However when ABC requested Majcher if he was working for the Chinese language authorities, he stated he needed to be “cautious” together with his wording. He stated he was working for third-party “entities” related to Chinese language police “in some kind or one other.”