Canada former police intelligence chief convicted of leaking secrets

In a case that shook the country’s intelligence establishment, a former high-ranking Canadian police official was convicted guilty Wednesday of passing secrets to criminal organisations. Cameron Ortis, 51, was the director general of the RCMP’s national intelligence coordination unit until his arrest in 2020. He was accused of abusing his position in order to obtain sensitive material from Canada and the strong Five Eyes intelligence collaboration, which also includes Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. He then attempted to sell the information to those involved in money laundering activities for terrorist organisations on Canada’s list. He also informed someone about an undercover police who was targeting one of his acquaintances in Vancouver, which the prosecution claimed put the undercover cop in danger. Ortis was found guilty of four counts of leaking and trying to sell special operational information, as well as unauthorized use of a computer and breach of trust. His bail was revoked until a sentencing hearing scheduled for January 11-12. Prosecutor Judy Kliewer said the Crown would seek “a very lengthy prison term.” The penalties for each of the six counts range from five to 14 years. This was the first ever trial under Canada’s Security of Information Act, and many of the details surrounding the case could not be divulged due to national security concerns. The defense had sought to paint Ortis as a patriot and a dedicated member of the RCMP who acted “to confront a grave threat to Canada.” But Kliewer urged the jury in closing arguments not to believe him when Ortis claimed “that his criminal, self-motivated acts were aimed at some lofty and secret purpose.” According to redacted transcripts of Ortis’s testimony, given behind closed doors for security reasons, he received a mysterious tip from a foreign agency in late 2014. That led him on a secret mission to use intelligence to lure criminal targets into adopting an encrypted service set up to eavesdrop on their communications. The tip, he said, included credible information about a national security threat that he had been instructed not to share with anyone as there was concern about a possible mole within police ranks. The prosecution and defense agreed that Ortis sought to sell secrets to four targets of police investigations including Vincent Ramos, the chief executive of a Canadian company that provided encrypted mobile phones to crime groups, for Can$20,000 (USD$14,500). The jury only had to decide whether he had been authorized to share the information. Witnesses including Ortis’s former boss, RCMP assistant commissioner Todd Shean, testified that Ortis was never meant to go undercover or reach out to targets of police investigations.