Crown closes case without calling key witness at foreign influence trial of former Mountie

A prosecuting officer stunned a B.C. Sublime margaret court tribulation wed with the unexpected closure of the Crown's case against a former Mountie accused of helping China to target an alleged fraudster.

Charles Hough ended the Crown's case against William Majcher without calling a friend of the accused's who had been expected to act as a key witness. 

Majcher is accused of acting at China's behest by preparing a campaign to bully a wanted multimillionaire expat into returning to China. 

His friend, Kenneth "Kim" Marsh, is another former RCMP officer whose testimony the Crown was expected to rely on as a means to connect dots in a largely circumstantial case drawing inferences from emails about Majcher's work in the private sector.

But when Hough announced the Crown was closing its case after just two days and two witnesses, gasps could be heard among Majcher's supporters in the courtroom.

And the accused's lawyer — veteran defender Ian Donaldson — told the judge he would need the rest of the day to readjust.

"I have to process this because I expected at the close of the Crown’s case, it would look a certain way," Donaldson told Justice Martha Devlin.

"What I have to do now is I have to think about what the case is, when I’ve been expecting the case to be something different for 18 months."

The Crown believes Majcher's alleged activities were part of Project Fox Hunt/Sky Net, a global Chinese law enforcement campaign to intimidate Chinese fugitives in their new countries of residence through private investigators, former officials and ex-law enforcement officers.

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.

It was in that capacity the Crown claims China used Majcher in 2017 to prepare a campaign to "induce" B.C.-based real-estate mogul Hongwei (Kevin) Sun to return himself and his assets to China where he was wanted for financial crimes involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

The central piece of evidence before Devlin is an email Majcher sent an associate in June 2017 in which he speaks about an unnamed "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."

Pre-trial rulings detail the evidence that Marsh was expected to proffer had he testified.

"Marsh apparently investigated Mr. Sun for an alleged financial fraud that Mr. Sun had committed against the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China," Devlin wrote.

"I expect that, among other things, the Crown will intend to establish through Mr. Marsh that the description of the 'fraudster' and 'crook' in Mr. Majcher’s correspondence ... Is consistent with information Mr. Marsh had gathered about Mr. Sun."

As it stands, the only witnesses to testify for the Crown were former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German, who spoke about his own correspondence with Majcher, and RCMP Supt. Peter Tsui, who testified about China's interest in tracking down Sun.

The sudden end to the Crown's presentation of the case is the latest in a series of twists that have emerged since the former police officer's headline-grabbing arrest in March 2023 at the Vancouver International Airport.

Devlin recently issued a ruling declaring the arrest itself a violation of Majcher's rights not to be arbitrarily detained, based on "nothing more than suspicion, speculation, hypotheses, and guesswork."

Last year, the judge also threw out a search warrant for Marsh's home, which was based on a narrative of events that Devlin said established China's interest in targeting its citizens abroad but fell short of connecting Majcher or Marsh to those efforts.

The judge said the information sworn to obtain the warrant "establishes the existence of Fox Hunt/Skynet, and the use of former police investigators who appear to engage in coercive measures to assist the PRC [People's Republic of China] in repatriating targets of Fox Hunt/Skynet."

"However, when I review the specific information pertaining to (Sun and another target) as they purportedly relate to Mr. Majcher and Mr. Marsh, I conclude that there is a critical informational gap such that that the inferences ... Fail to rise above mere speculation and conjecture," Devlin wrote.

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