Cameron Jay Ortis, a former RCMP intelligence official charged with breaching Canada’s secrets law, arrives for his trial at the courthouse in Ottawa, on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
A jury in the trial of an ex-RCMP intelligence director has found Cameron Ortis guilty on all counts.
The verdict in Mr. Ortis’s trial follows a weeks-long trial held in the Superior Court of Justice in Ottawa.
Mr. Ortis faced six charges in total, including four for allegedly breaching the Security of Information Act when he communicated with the subjects of international criminal investigations and shared secret information with them.
He also faced a charge for unauthorized use of a computer and another for breach of trust. The 51-year-old pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Mr. Ortis’s case, including his September, 2019 arrest, garnered attention in the world of national security and intelligence because of highly classified Five Eyes information he had access to. The Five Eyes is an intelligence pact that includes Canada, along with Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
Mr. Ortis, who no longer works for the RCMP, was first hired by the national police force in 2007.
Mr. Ortis testified over the span of more than four days but members of the public were blocked from seeing in real time (a consortium of media opposed this exclusion, including The Globe and Mail).
According to transcripts, Mr. Ortis said he had lost his pension and all of his possessions following his arrest. He also said his reputation had been “completely destroyed.”
Mr. Ortis testified he was contacted in fall 2014 by a counterpart at a foreign agency, which he cannot name, about a plan to use a “storefront” – a fake business or entity established covertly by an intelligence organization or a law-enforcement organization – designed to see targets feed information into the Five Eyes system and then back in to the RCMP.
An e-mail provider named by Mr. Ortis in court, which is now known as Tuta, said in a statement it is not owned or operated by any secret service, nor is it a “storefront” and allegations made by Mr. Ortis in court are completely untrue.
One of Mr. Ortis’s lawyers told jurors in his closing remarks that his client did not betray the country, nor the national police force that he worked for. Mr. Ortis had been alerted to a grave threat, Mr. Doody added.
“Cam is not allowed to tell you the identity of the foreign agency that provided him with the information,” said Mr. Doody, adding that Mr. Ortis could not tell jurors “the content of that threat.”
Mr. Doody also said his client is “quite possibly the first Canadian required to testify in their own defence without the ability to tell the jury” the full story.
The Crown rejected the story put forward by Mr. Ortis.
In her closing arguments to the jury, Judy Kliewer, counsel with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said Mr. Ortis had no authority to communicate special information. She also said the information shared was not the kind that would be used to “nudge” targets to use a certain platform for communication.
“The story that he told you about why he did what he did doesn’t have the slightest ring of truth,” she said.
The Crown said sharing classified information with the subjects of a police investigation could allow them to evade efforts made by law enforcement officers.
Three charges that Mr. Ortis faces relate to communication with international police targets including Vincent Ramos, who owned a B.C.-based company that produced encrypted cellphones used by organized crime, and two Greater Toronto Area businessmen Salim Henareh and Muhammad Ashraf. Another charge is linked to attempted communication with another individual, Farzam Mehdizadeh.
The agreed statement of facts in the Ortis trial says Mr. Henareh, Mr. Ashraf and Mr. Mehdizadeh and their companies were subjects of investigation in Canada.
It also said that from at least 2014, the RCMP, along with Five Eyes law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, investigated money-laundering activities conducted by entities believed to be associated with Altaf Khanani.
Mr. Khanani, a Dubai-based owner of money-services businesses and head of an international money-laundering network, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in October, 2015, and was sentenced to 68 months in U.S. prison.
A press release from the U.S. Treasury Department said in November, 2015 that the Khanani organization “launders illicit funds for organized-crime groups, drug-trafficking organizations, and designated terrorist groups throughout the world.”
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