A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been arrested and charged with accessing police records and passing information to the Rwandan government.
The federal police force said on Tuesday that its integrated national security enforcement team (Inset) had arrested Constable Eli Ndatuje, who was stationed in Alberta.
Ndatuje has been charged with breach of trust, unauthorized use of a computer, and breach of trust with respect to safeguarded information, an alleged violation of the country’s Security of Information Act.
He is due to appear in a Calgary court on 11 March. He has been released but has been ordered to surrender his passport, stay within the province and report for fingerprinting.
According to court documents, Ndatuje stands accused of passing “safeguarded information on the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) system to a foreign entity, to wit the Republic of Rwanda.”
Ndatuje was born in Uganda but is of Rwandan descent. He moved to Canada when he was 14 years old.
The RCMP said after it learned of the alleged security breach, it put in place measures to monitor and prevent further unauthorized disclosures of information.
“The RCMP is committed to combating foreign actor interference at all levels and is actively leveraging all tools at its disposal,” it said in the news release. “Foreign interference takes on many forms and it is critical that all organizations are aware of the potential harm at any levels.”
Ndatuje is the third member of the RCMP to have been recently charged under the Security of Information Act. Last week, a former top Canadian police intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for leaking secret information.
Over the summer, police also charged the retired RCMP employee William Majcher with two counts under the Security of Information Act, alleging he “used his knowledge and his extensive network of contacts in Canada to obtain intelligence or services to benefit the People’s Republic of China”. He has been granted bail and has not formally entered a plea.
Canada is in the midst of a reckoning over the scope and influence of foreign countries in its government institutions. Over the past year, leaked intelligence reports suggest China has attempted to “meddle” with Canada’s elections.
In September, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said there were “credible allegations” linking India to the assassination of a political activist in Canada.
An independent commission is investigating alleged foreign interference in Canadian affairs.
