Canadian officials are attending the trial of a Canadian engineer accused of corporate espionage in Indonesia, though the government remains tight-lipped about the extent of its involvement.
In May, Rick van Lee, 63, was accused by his employers — a branch of Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL Group), one of the largest pulp and paper producers in Southeast Asia — of what they say was illegal copying of sensitive company information.
According to Timothy Inkiriwang, van Lee’s lawyer, the accused and his wife had their car confiscated and on May 31 were placed under house arrest for six weeks, guarded by APRIL’s private security staff in the company’s residential compound in Kerinci, Sumatra.
Inkiriwang believes his client was detained because he didn’t want to sign a new contract, preferring to take a job that would move van Lee back to Vancouver.
APRIL denies preventing the couple from leaving the compound, and say van Lee was collaborating illegally with a competitor.
According to his lawyer, van Lee was transferred July 5 into the custody of Indonesian authorities and charged based on an Indonesian criminal law that prohibits stealing or altering electronic documents belonging to others.
Inkiriwang told the Sun earlier this month that Canadian consular officials were not attending van Lee’s hearings. Since then, a pair of Canadian officials appeared in court on Nov. 14, Inkiriwang said Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade wouldn’t comment on the matter, but noted Canadian officials in Indonesia are aware of the situation.
“The way we see it, Rick is not getting a fair trial,” Inkiriwang said. “(The injustice) shows by the lack of evidence and the awful handling of the case by the police investigators.” The judges, he said, act as if they are public prosecutors and take part in questioning witnesses directly, including van Lee. “We feel as if we’re opposing the judges, and not the public prosecutor, which we find very unusual and strange.”
The lawyer said police never performed digital forensics on van Lee’s computer, and the defence team fears evidence contained on van Lee’s laptop and external storage devices has not been handled properly by investigators.
“The laptop and USB (drive) . . . wasn’t confiscated from Rick, but from the company,” he said. “The right procedure . . . is that the evidence should be confiscated from the person that owns it,” he said.
APRIL spokeswoman Jamie Menon said they found evidence of several months’ worth of collaboration with a direct competitor by van Lee. That discovery triggered an internal company investigation, which led APRIL to involve the police.
At no point were van Lee and his wife prevented from leaving the compound or meeting with his lawyers, she said.
But, said Inkiriwang, “Rick was not allowed to leave the company’s compound, even during the time when we (his legal team) . . . came to visit him. They (APRIL’s security) escorted us to the hotel inside the complex, and brought Rick and his wife there to meet us. We couldn’t even meet outside of the complex until it (was) time to be interviewed by the police.”
Van Lee, who has suffered a minor stroke and lost 45 pounds while in custody, is slated to appear in court again Thursday, with a verdict expected sometime before Dec. 11.
If convicted, he could face up to eight years in Indonesian prison.
Legislation drafted by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin to update the 1917 Espionage Act has angered public disclosure advocates who say the proposal would make it harder for federal employees to expose government fraud and abuse.
The bill would clarify a murky area of law to ensure that anyone who publicly leaks classified material could be prosecuted criminally, which is not necessarily the case today. The proposal also would make it illegal for government employees to violate nondisclosure agreements.
Watchdog groups say the measure would make it harder to uncover secret military programs — such as domestic surveillance — because it doesn’t provide protection for whistleblowers and ignores a broadlyheld view that the Pentagon and other agencies are overzealously classifying material.
“The truth is that not everything that is classified is deserving of protection,” said Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues for the Federation of American Scientists. “Moldy old secrets from decades past are still classified.”
GATINEAU, Que. ” Corporate espionage ” ranging from Dumpster diving for industrial secrets to plying vulnerable employees of competitors with booze, drugs and sex in exchange for information — is a common tactic in Canada for companies to get ahead, says a former CSIS spy and private investigator.
Tuesday, at the Canadian Industrial Security Conference, Ron Myles said that Canadian companies often perceive corporate spying and infiltration as something out of Hollywood and insists the amount of cases that are exposed is but a mere fraction of the problem in this country.
“As Canadians, we undervalue our abilities in research and development, we’re a little bit naive in the sense that the rest of the world is doing this (but not in Canada),” Myles said in an interview after presenting to a packed room on the opening day of the two-day conference. “We carry that attitude into our business and I think it costs Canadian businesses quite a bit.
“I don’t think even the tip of the iceberg is showing. (Corporate espionage) is more prevalent in small- and medium- sized companies because they’re often just starting up and don’t have massive (security) budgets.”
Myles, who was a CSIS officer for 13 years before working another 13 years as a private investigator, said a number of methods are used by competing interests in terms of stealing ideas and other intellectual property — noting the technology sector is targeted most.
In addition to rummaging through another company’s trash with the hope of acquiring secrets, he said other, more involved techniques are employed.
Long-term infiltration, by which a person that is compensated by a competing company, lands a job with the target group and feeds information back as trust is gained.
The scandal involving the wiretapping of several Slovak journalists by military intelligence agents has cost Defense Minister Ä˝ubomĂr Galko his job.
But as more information behind the secret monitoring program of the Military Defense Intelligence (VOS) has unfolded, government officials have learned that one of the journalists monitored on Galko’s watch was also wiretapped when the ministry was controlled by a nominee of the Smer party in 2007.
It has also emerged that the recent VOS operation involved wiretapping the head of TV news channel TA3 and two senior Defense Ministry employees, according to leaked documents obtained by Slovak media outlets.
“The whole story of wiretapping which is being uncovered today was also going on under previous governments,” said Prime Minister Iveta RadiÄŤová, who Nov. 22 asked President Ivan GašparoviÄŤ to dismiss Galko. “It is high time to reach an agreement and [start] an initiative over control mechanisms for the intelligence services.”
The prime minister will serve as Galko’s replacement until new elections are held in March 2012.
RadiÄŤová in her response also said it is now obvious that the “intelligence services have been doing everything possible – except what they were originally supposed to do and what their main role should be.”
The Pravda and NovĂ˝ ÄŚas dailies reported Nov. 21 that three reporters from Pravda’s domestic political department – editor PatrĂcia Poprocká and reporters Peter Kováč and Vanda Vavrová – as well as the head of TV news channel TA3, Michal GuÄŤĂk, had been wiretapped by the VOS. The alleged wiretapping ended after the fall of the government in October, according to Pravda.
Galko’s Freedom and Solidarity Party (SaS) has continued to back him. He argues that the wiretaps were performed legally and were intended to uncover criminal activity.
In Slovakia, military intelligence activities are performed by two organizations operating under the Defense Ministry: the Military Defense Intelligence (VOS), which conducts counterintelligence, and the Military Intelligence Service.
The request to apply what are known as “information technical devices” to bug journalists was signed by the head of the VOS, Pavol Brychta, and the wiretapping, which was reportedly intended to monitor the so-called “contact base” of three journalists, was approved by a judge. Brychta confirmed these details to the parliamentary committee for the oversight of military intelligence Nov. 22.
Brychta told the committee the journalists in question had participated in the leaking of sensitive information from the Defense Ministry, according to Peter Žiga, the Smer MP who leads the committee.
Opposition Smer party leader and former Prime Minister Robert Fico called the wiretapping program an assault on democracy and the foundations of the state, and suggested Galko had confirmed in live coverage that the information published by the media was genuine.
“It is one of the most serious abuses of power, to an extent that we don’t dare to dream of,” Fico told reporters Nov. 24.
It was later revealed that Smer-nominated former Defense Minister Jaroslav Baška admitted the VOS had also monitored at least one journalist during Fico’s government. In a media statement, Baška objected to comparisons made between the present affair and the wiretapping of Poprocká by the VOS in 2007, when the department was led by František KašickĂ˝, another Smer nominee, and Baška, who was deputy minister at the time. Poprocká, one of the Pravda reporters allegedly monitored by the VOS this year, was bugged in 2007 under KašickĂ˝ when she worked as editor of the Ĺ˝urnál weekly.
The VOS under Galko also used suspected leaks of classified information from the ministry as its justification for wiretapping journalists. Only a few days before the scandal broke, the Defense Ministry had filed a criminal complaint over suspicions that fraud had occurred during the government’s conclusion of a contract to buy a mobile communication system, MOKYS, which had cost Slovakia several billion Slovak crowns.
Just days after filing the complaint, Slovak newspaper editorial offices received anonymous information about the purchase of military trucks and military emergency vehicles. According to Galko, two of these newspapers, Pravda and NovĂ˝ ÄŚas, had “published stories about alleged illegal wiretapping of journalists by the military counterintelligence.”
Galko also said that on the one hand he understands the emotions and outrage of journalists, but “on the other hand, if there is suspicion that a crime has been committed, I am personally convinced there is no difference between a politician, or a minister for that matter, an employee, a businessman, a regular person or a journalist.”
Radičová said the Justice Ministry will review the decisions of the judges who approved the wiretaps, but added that the media did publish confidential information and violated the law by doing so.
Former general prosecutor Dobroslav Trnka has been tapped to lead the government probe into the affair.
Beata Balogová can be reached at news [at] praguepost [dot] com
A man accused of murdering two soldiers refused to answer detectives’ questions because his solicitor feared their consultations would be bugged, a court has heard.
Colin Duffy’s former lawyer Pat Vernon said Northern Ireland police refused to provide reassurances on his concerns over monitoring at Antrim custody suite.
Solicitor Manmohan Sandhu was imprisoned for unrelated offences after an earlier case where his conversations with a client were recorded at the same police station.
Duffy and co-accused Brian Shivers deny the murder of Sappers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar, who were shot outside their army base in Antrim.
Duffy’s then-solicitor Mr Vernon told Antrim Crown Court: “We were not in a position to answer any questions because of my inability to advise Mr Duffy, given the failure of the police to confirm that the interview was not being monitored.”
Sappers Quinsey, 23, and Azimkar, 21, were shot dead by the Real IRA as they collected pizzas with comrades outside Massereene Army base in Antrim town in March 2009.
Duffy, 44, from Forest Glade in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and Shivers, 46, from Sperrin Mews, in Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, deny two charges of murder and the attempted murder of six others – three soldiers, two pizza delivery drivers and a security guard.
Duffy was advised by his solicitor during days of police interviews about the attack. He was counselled to deny membership of any organisation or any involvement after he told his solicitor he was not guilty. His legal team at the trial want the interviews excluded and the judge to avoid drawing any adverse inference from Duffy’s non-cooperation.
Prosecution lawyer Paul Ramsey QC said Mr Vernon had reiterated several times that no evidence had been put to his client and asked why he had not similarly put his concerns about monitoring on the record during interviews.
Mr Vernon responded: “I had made it clear to them (police) that I was not happy with their assurances so they were aware of my concerns about the question of monitoring.” He said he was given a letter which neither confirmed nor denied the monitoring but linked any such move to the surveillance commissioner.
