{"id":626827,"date":"2026-04-25T02:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626827\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T02:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:27:09","slug":"crown-claims-former-mounties-actions-affront-to-canadian-sovereignty-as-foreign-influence-trial-nears-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626827\/","title":{"rendered":"Crown claims former Mountie&#8217;s actions &#8216;affront to Canadian sovereignty&#8217; as foreign influence trial nears end"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 6 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>A former Mountie committed &#8220;an affront to Canadian sovereignty&#8221; by allegedly acting in China&#8217;s interests by targeting an alleged fraudster, a Crown prosecutor told the judge overseeing William Majcher&#8217;s B.C. Supreme Court trial Friday.<\/p>\n<p>As he laid out the Crown&#8217;s final submissions, Ryan Carrier told Justice Martha Devlin that a &#8220;constellation&#8221; of facts proved Majcher was laying the groundwork for what amounted to a campaign of extortion against a B.C.-based real estate mogul wanted by the People&#8217;s Republic of China (PRC).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mr. Majcher took steps to use the spectre of [China&#8217;s] criminal pursuit and criminal proceedings to induce a permanent resident of Canada, living in Canada at the time, to acquiesce to the demands of a foreign government,&#8221; Carrier told the judge.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In doing so, Mr. Majcher knew that what he was doing benefited the PRC law enforcement, which was able to project its power beyond the PRC&#8217;s borders into Canada &#8230; This was an affront to Canadian sovereignty, a most serious threat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An &#8216;end-run&#8217; around Canadian sovereignty<\/p>\n<p>Majcher has pleaded not guilty to one count of &#8220;engaging in preparatory acts to commit an offence&#8221; under Canada&#8217;s Security of Information Act.<\/p>\n<p>Carrier&#8217;s closing submissions came after two days of testimony. Majcher&#8217;s lawyer will make his final argument Monday.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A statue of a blindfolded female figure holding a scale inside a glass-roofed building\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777084029_603_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.7772511848341233\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>William Majcher is on trial at B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver. The defence is expected to present final submissions on Monday. (Peter Scobie\/CBC)<\/p>\n<p>The Crown claims the Chinese used Majcher in 2017 to do an &#8220;end-run&#8221; around Canadian laws preventing them from directly arresting or approaching multimillionaire Hongwei (Kevin) Sun, who moved to Vancouver after allegedly committing financial crimes in China.<\/p>\n<p>Sun was accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a Chinese bank, which he allegedly plowed into a Lower Mainland real estate empire.<\/p>\n<p>The former head of the RCMP&#8217;s liaison office in Beijing testified that China&#8217;s Ministry of Public Security approached him about Sun in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Supt. Peter Tsui claimed the Chinese wanted the RCMP to act on historic fraud charges against Sun, but Canadian police were ultimately forced to give them a &#8220;hard no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said the Chinese eventually &#8220;changed their tactics&#8221; and asked if they could speak to Sun. The RCMP tracked the fugitive down, but he said he wouldn&#8217;t talk with RCMP or Chinese authorities, saying they couldn&#8217;t touch him in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Crucial email about an unnamed &#8216;fraudster&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward to March 2018, and Tsui said the Chinese police had cancelled an international &#8220;red notice&#8221; for Sun&#8217;s arrest, saying they were in negotiations with the fugitive because of an expired passport that prevented him from travelling.<\/p>\n<p>Carrier set the Crown&#8217;s theory of the case against Majcher in that context, pointing to the contents of an email he wrote to a colleague in June 2017 \u2014 in the period after the RCMP closed the case on Sun and before the Chinese appeared to have entered negotiations with him.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A man in a dark suit and tie poses for a profile picture.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777084029_991_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.7770034843205575\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>William Majcher is seen in a photo from his LinkedIn profile. The former Mountie moved to Hong Kong after retiring, setting up a firm that specialized in asset recovery. (William Majcher\/LinkedIn)<\/p>\n<p>Majcher moved to Hong Kong and founded a corporate risk firm specializing in asset recovery after retiring from the RCMP in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>In the email, he spoke about an unnamed &#8220;fraudster&#8221; who the Crown contends is Sun.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fraudster is now a &#8230; major real estate mogul in Vancouver and we have located over $100M of assets. The Chinese Police have opened a Task Force and standing by to issue a global arrest warrant,&#8221; the email reads.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I hope to have a copy of the warrant before it is issued so we can impress upon the crook that we hold the keys to his future. I am meeting an associate of the target tomorrow in HK [Hong Kong] to see if he can help negotiate a settlement as the Chinese want to use this as a precedent case to settle economic crimes quietly and expeditiously.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The email doesn&#8217;t name Sun, but Carrier claims the unique details of the situation make it obvious the &#8220;fraudster&#8221; could only be one man: Hongwei (Kevin) Sun.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecutor claimed the email pointed to the preparation of a pressure campaign with a clear objective: forcing Sun to bend to China&#8217;s will with threats backed by the Chinese state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That means something. The PRC is coming for you. It&#8217;s like the Hells Angels are coming for you, but they&#8217;re a bit of a joke compared to the PRC,&#8221; the prosecutor told Devlin.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The plan was \u2014 this is what you have to do and these are the consequences if you don&#8217;t do it. The plan is to make him some kind of offer that you can&#8217;t refuse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Carrier said the email &#8220;demonstrated that he was working for the benefit of or in association with the Chinese authorities&#8221; because &#8220;Bill Majcher the private citizen is simply not able to guarantee Mr. Sun a passport and no jail time on his own.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Suspicion, speculation, hypotheses&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The narrow courtroom gallery has been filled each day with Majcher&#8217;s defenders, including a number of former police officers and private investigators who say their lives have also been upended as a result of the investigation into their friend.<\/p>\n<p>Majcher&#8217;s wife has also attended every day. Outside the courthouse this week, Majcher said he is hoping for a not guilty verdict that will see him head back to Hong Kong and his children.  <\/p>\n<p>His lawyer, veteran defender Ian Donaldson, told the judge he plans to make a number of key points in response.<\/p>\n<p>In pre-trial proceedings, Donaldson has refuted the allegations against his client, convincing Devlin\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bccourts.ca\/jdb-txt\/sc\/26\/05\/2026BCSC0538.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">to issue a ruling<\/a>\u00a0in March that his 2023 arrest violated his right not to be arbitrarily detained.<\/p>\n<p>Majcher claimed that the grounds for his arrest represented &#8220;nothing more than suspicion, speculation, hypotheses, and guesswork,&#8221; the judge wrote, noting that she previously threw out a search warrant related to the case on similar grounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 6 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-626827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}