A FORMER high-ranking Canadian police official was found guilty yesterday of leaking secrets to criminal organisations in a case that convulsed the country’s intelligence community.

Cameron Ortis, 51, was director-general of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) national intelligence coordination unit until his arrest in 2020.

He was accused of using his position to access sensitive information from Canada and the powerful Five Eyes intelligence alliance – which also includes Australia, the United States, Britain and New Zealand.

He then tried to sell the information to individuals linked to money-laundering schemes for Canada-listed terrorist groups.

He also tipped off an individual about an undercover officer targeting one of his associates in Vancouver, which the prosecution said put the undercover cop at risk.

Ortis was found guilty of four counts of leaking and trying to sell special operational information, as well as unauthorised 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His bail was revoked until a sentencing hearing scheduled for January 11-12.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 defence 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 defence 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 C$20,000 (RM68,500).

The jury only had to decide whether he had been authorised 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. – AFP, November 23, 2023.