The Law Courts building, which is home to B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, on Monday, January 12, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
William Majcher is pictured outside B.C. Supreme Court, in Vancouver, as his trial got underway on Monday, April 20, 2026. Majcher, a former RCMP officer, has pleaded not guilty to a charge under Canada's Security of Information Act. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brenna Owen
The Law Courts building, which is home to B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, on Monday, January 12, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
GAC
William Majcher is pictured outside B.C. Supreme Court, in Vancouver, as his trial got underway on Monday, April 20, 2026. Majcher, a former RCMP officer, has pleaded not guilty to a charge under Canada's Security of Information Act. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brenna Owen
VANCOUVER - The trial of a former RCMP officer got underway in British Columbia Supreme Court Monday, with prosecutors alleging William Majcher prepared to coerce a resident of the province to return to China, where he was wanted for financial crimes.
Majcher stood as he pleaded not guilty to one count of committing "preparatory acts" for an offence under Canada's Security of Information Act.
The prosecution alleges his actions in May and June of 2017 were done for the benefit or at the direction of the Chinese government as he prepared to induce Hongwei Sun, also known as Kevin Sun, by "threat, accusation, menace or violence."
A ruling by the same court earlier this month said the Crown's "central piece of evidence" at the trial would be an email Majcher sent to an associate in June 2017.
The April 1 ruling includes what it calls the most pertinent passages of the email, which related to an effort to recover proceeds from a fraud allegedly committed in China by someone who had become a real estate mogul in Vancouver.
"The Chinese police have opened a task force and standing by to issue a global arrest warrant," the email said, according to the court ruling.
"I hope to have a copy of the warrant before it is issued so we can impress upon the crook that we hold the keys to his future," it said, adding "the Chinese want to use this as a precedent case to settle economic crimes quietly and expeditiously."
The ruling includes a further email in which Majcher apparently wrote that if the unnamed "target" co-operated, he hoped to settle the matter within a few weeks.
"If he fights then (there) will be extradition request and lengthier process but we feel he is motivated to co-operate as we can guarantee him his passport and no jail time."
The ruling followed another from a few days earlier in which Justice Martha Devlin found Majcher's warrantless arrest at Vancouver's airport in 2023 was unconstitutional, occurring without reasonable and probable grounds.
The earlier ruling, dated March 26, said the RCMP began investigating Majcher in September 2021, after he had retired from the force and moved to Hong Kong.
Devlin found 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 好色tv law, the ruling said.
She said 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.
The investigation focused on whether the former Mountie was facilitating the efforts of the Chinese government in Canada to target Chinese nationals for repatriation as part of anticorruption operations, Devlin's ruling said.
The ruling described a police report that said Sun was wanted in China for financial crimes "ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars."
It said the report indicated Sun, a Vancouver resident, "allegedly used the proceeds of his financial crimes to purchase large amounts of real estate" in the city.
This report by 好色tvwas first published April 20, 2026.