The former head of Canada’s federal police intelligence unit, accused of leaking top secret information to targets of investigations, testified he did nothing wrong, according to a transcript released Thursday.
Cameron Ortis, 51, was the director general of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) national intelligence coordination unit until his arrest in September 2020.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges that convulsed the national security and intelligence community of trying to sell sensitive secrets from Canada and the powerful Five Eyes intelligence alliance — to which Canada belongs with Australia, the United States, Britain and New Zealand — to individuals linked to criminal groups.
Ortis testified in his own defense last week in-camera as many of the details surrounding the case may not be divulged due to national security.
According to a redacted court transcript, he was asked by defense lawyer Mark Ertel if he’d acted in any criminal way.
“I did not,” Ortis replied.
He was also asked if he had betrayed the RCMP.
“Absolutely not,” Ortis said.
“What I did was not wrong,” he added, insisting that he “did have the authority” to act as he did.
His lawyer told the court last week to expect Ortis to testify that his actions were the result of “secret information communicated to him by a foreign agency” and that he had a “duty to act” to safeguard Canada “from serious and imminent threats.”
On the stand, Ortis described his focus over several years on an “extraordinary amount of money that was being laundered” through Canada and its closest partners, and hostile state actors and transnational organized crime groups behind it.
He also said Western governments, law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community grew worried about crime groups or terrorists using encrypted mobile phones such as now-defunct BlackBerry handsets “to carry out and communicate during operations.”
The court previously heard that Ortis had communicated operational details of police investigations to four people through anonymous encrypted emails found on his computer, at one point asking them for $20,000 for more documents.
Authorities got wind of this through a separate investigation of a British Columbia company that provided encrypted mobile phones to drug traffickers and money launderers around the world.
RCMP documents eventually linked to Ortis were found on the laptop of Phantom Secure Communications founder Vincent Ramos, who has been jailed for racketeering in the United States.
To date, there has only been one conviction under Canada’s Security of Information Act: a Canadian naval officer who pleaded guilty in 2012 to selling secrets to Russia.
Ortis is the first to face a trial under the act.
