[. . . . ] "We knew that many of our organized crime figures -- people with records, people without records but serious criminals – were looking to move to Canada,” says Boucher [former Royal Hong Kong Police Chief Detective Inspector Sandy Boucher].

But while Canadian authorities are supposed to keep those kinds of people out, in Hong Kong, something appeared to be going very wrong. “Some applied (for visas) and were turned back, some applied and got in,” says Boucher. “It was no secret.”

One such immigrant was Lee Chau Ping, a notorious drug trafficker who is known as the Ice Queen. In 1992, after police raided her labs and one of her safe houses, the Ice Queen got on a plane headed for Canada. Not thinking that the Canadian government would let her stay, Boucher assumed the Ice Queen had headed oversees to wait for the heat on her gang to die down a little. So he was shocked when an RCMP officer told him she had been granted landed immigrant status.

“I said, ‘It can’t be – she’s got a criminal record. I know she’s known to Canadian authorities.’”

But apparently, Lee Chau Ping – who posed as a businesswoman ready to invest $170,000 in a Chicken Delight franchise in a tiny town in northern Saskatchewan – had slipped under the radar. And Brian McAdam, the immigration control officer at the High Commission in Hong Kong, soon learned that other criminals had too.

“I discovered that these Triad people (members of secret Chinese organized crime fraternities that have ties to members of the Hong Kong business community) were regulars at getting visas to visit their families or go on holidays as the case may be, and yet clearly on the file was intelligence information identifying who they were.”

[. . . . There is more here on McAdam and Garry Clement] McAdam and Clement set out for the answers. Immediately, they found obvious signs of corruption: complaints from a Chinese couple that someone at the embassy had offered to expedite their visa application in exchange for $10,000; fake immigration stamps and a fake visa receipt. In one incident, McAdam actually saw the criminal records of Triad members literally drop off their files after he pulled them up on the computer.

[. . . .] The source told W-FIVE he was never aware of the exact price for a Canadian visa, but he estimated the entry cost for a Triad member’s family would be in the neighbourhood of $500,000 HK. And he said the corruption was far and wide within the embassy.

“Without help from insiders it won’t work. … It takes more than one person in the High Commission to get the job done, not just one single person – there must be big, big scandal behind it all.”

In 1992, the Department of Foreign Affairs sent over a computer expert from Ottawa to probe the lapses. The top-secret report prepared by that expert, David Balser, confirmed the existence of some alarming security breaches at the mission, including the fact that unauthorized staff had access to the computer system where visas could be approved with a check mark and criminal records could be scrubbed clean.

But though the report revealed some major problems, it went virtually unnoticed. In 1995, Liberal [and former Conservative] MP David Kilgour wrote a letter to then-prime minister Jean Chretien warning of the “highly irresponsible and/or illegal practices” at the High Commission and asking for a full public inquiry. It was never acknowledged.

Then, in 1996, RCMP Corporal Robert Read was assigned to review the Hong Kong file. And while he too thought there were clear problems that needed to be investigated, he says he was urged by his superiors to turn a blind eye.

[. . . .] And Read wasn’t the only member of the RCMP to be shut down by the force. In 1993, Staff Sergeant Jim Puchniak requested permission to go to Hong Kong to conduct a full investigation, but he was told by the RCMP liason officer at the mission, Inspector Gary Lagamodiere, that doing so would upset the High Commissioner.

[. . . .] While the report clearly vindicated Read, the RCMP has refused to reinstate him – a decision he is fighting in Federal Court. But because he never got the investigation he wanted into the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong, questions about the depth of the corruption and political interference there will probably never be answered. Both John Higgenbotham, the Canadian High Commissioner in Hong Kong from 1989 to 1994, and RCMP Superintendent Giuliano Zaccardelli – people who may be able to lend some perspective to the unanswered questions -- refused to be interviewed by W-FIVE.

But regardless of who was responsible, for retired RCMP superintendent Garry Clement, it all comes down to one thing.

“Did we drop the ball? I have to take as much credit – I was a senior officer in the RCMP. … I don’t think we should try to defend it. The bottom line is, we dropped the ball in this investigation.”