Crown claims William Majcher committed ‘preparatory acts’ to induce wanted expat to co-operate with China.

A former Mountie accused of acting on behalf of the Chinese government pleaded not guilty Monday to laying the groundwork for a scheme to “induce” a multimillionaire Chinese expat to turn himself over to China where he was accused of financial crimes.

William Majcher took to his feet in the first minutes of what is expected to be a two-week trial in order to deny the single charge against him: committing “preparatory acts” to commit an offence under Canada’s Security of Information Act.

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The Crown believes Majcher’s alleged activities were part of global law enforcement initiatives undertaken by China using intermediaries like private investigators, former officials and ex-law enforcement officers to intimidate Chinese fugitives in their new countries of residence.

The trial was set to take place in front of a jury, but a last-minute decision was made to hold it by judge alone, which set the stage for the release last Friday of a flood of pre-trial decisions that were previously covered by a publication ban.

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In one of them, Justice Martha Devlin sets out what she calls “the central piece of evidence the Crown intends to lead at trial” — an email apparently sent by Majcher to an associate in June 2017 in which he speaks about a “fraudster” who the Crown contends is Sun.

“The fraudster is now a … 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,” the email reads.

“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.”

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Majcher worked for the RCMP from 1985 to 2007, specializing in undercover operations and the investigation of economic crimes. After retiring from the RCMP, he moved to Hong Kong and founded a corporate risk firm called EMIDR, which specializes in asset recovery.

According to one of Devlin’s previous rulings, the head of the investigation into Majcher said officers became aware of a speech Majcher gave on Chinese asset recovery in 2015 where he mentioned having been approached by “someone close to senior state security.”

Majcher was also described as a “heavy hitter … co-ordinating on the Chinese side” in an Australian documentary about an investigation into a company accused of investing “in the Australian real estate market with money that had been misappropriated in China.”

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