(Ottawa) Former director general of intelligence for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Cameron Jay Ortis violated Canada’s secrets law by sending sensitive information to several individuals who were targets of police investigations, a a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.
In an opening statement, Crown prosecutor Judy Kliewer outlined the case against Mr. Ortis as a multi-week trial before judge and jury began Tuesday in Superior Court of Ontario.
As the RCMP’s top intelligence official, Mr. Ortis had access to some of the most confidential information in the country.
He is accused of violating the Information Protection Act by allegedly revealing secrets to three people in 2015 and attempting to do so in a fourth case, as well as breach of trust and computer offences.
Mr. Ortis, 51, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
He was detained in Ottawa in September 2019, after an arrest that deeply shocked the national police.
Me Kliewer gave the jury an idea of how the case began, noting that an RCMP effort known as Project Saturation revealed that members of criminal organizations were using the encrypted communications devices of a British Columbia-based company Phantom Secure Communications.
The US Federal Police (FBI) arrested Vincent Ramos, president and CEO of Phantom Secure, in March 2018. In October of that year, he pleaded guilty to using his Phantom Secure devices to facilitate the distribution of drugs, including cocaine, in Canada, the United States and other countries.
While reviewing the seized files, the RCMP came across “strange and alarming” information: an email addressed to Ramos, from an unknown sender, containing parts of ten RCMP documents, said Mr.e Kliewer. The sender offered to provide Ramos with the complete documents in exchange for $20,000.
Further investigations, including analysis of an encrypted memory key, eventually led the RCMP to conclude that Ortis had communicated secrets to Ramos, Mr.e Kliewer in court.
The Crown is also expected to argue that Mr. Ortis provided secrets to individuals who were under investigation for alleged links to an international money laundering operation.
Me Kliewer said Mr. Ortis did not have the authority to do so, adding that there was no indication he passed on the information as part of some sort of sting operation.
The charges against Mr. Ortis allege that he communicated “special operational information” without authorization, despite being designated as a person “held in secret at all times” – a category that includes many Canadian community officials security and intelligence.
At the time, Mr. Ortis was in language training after having been director of an operations research unit staffed by analysts. Upon his return in 2016, he became Director General of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre.
The Crown suggested Tuesday that RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme and former RCMP boss Bob Paulson could be witnesses at the trial.
Jury selection moved quickly, allowing opening remarks in the case to begin in the afternoon Tuesday.
Mr. Ortis is free on bail under strict conditions, but he spent many months locked up in an Ottawa jail.
The case progressed while parallel proceedings took place in the Federal Court regarding sensitive information.
Mr. Ortis’s original defense attorney was appointed to the bench last year, leading to a change in counsel that also delayed proceedings.