Trial of ex-Mountie gets underway in B.C.

A former Mountie has pleaded not guilty to a charge under Canada’s Security of Information Act as his trial gets underway in British Columbia Supreme Court.

William Majcher stood as he entered his plea in the Vancouver courtroom, charged with one count of committing “preparatory acts” to commit an offence, with the Crown alleging that he was prepared to coerce a B.C. resident into repatriating himself and his assets to China.

The prosecution alleges Majcher actions in May and June of 2017 were done for the benefit or at the direction of the Chinese government as he was preparing to induce Hongwei Sun, also known as Kevin Sun, by “threat, accusation, menace or violence.”

The same court ruled last month that Majcher’s warrantless arrest at Vancouver’s airport in 2023 was unconstitutional and occurred without reasonable and probable grounds.

The ruling says the RCMP began investigating Majcher in September 2021, after he had retired from the force and moved to Hong Kong.

Justice Martha Devlin says in the ruling that the grounds for Majcher’s arrest “amount only to a hunch or generalized suspicion” that he engaged in a conspiracy to assist China’s efforts in a manner that would contravene Canadian law.

Devlin found the decision to arrest Majcher came at a time when the investigation was still “premature,” a term used by the team commander of the RCMP probe.

Her decision says the probe focused on whether he was facilitating the efforts of the Chinese government in Canada to target Chinese nationals for repatriation, as part of anticorruption operations.

Devlin’s ruling described a police report that Sun was wanted in China for financial crimes “ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars”.

She said the report indicated that Sun, a resident of Vancouver, “allegedly used the proceeds of his financial crimes to purchase large amounts of real estate in Vancouver.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 20, 2026.