Did Cameron Ortis help terrorist financiers?

18 January 2021 

In the fall of 2019, Canadian authorities arrested Cameron Ortis and charged him with a number of offenses, including some under the Security of Information Act (SoIA). It is extremely rare for such a charge to be issued, but it hints at the fact that Ortis was an insider threat within the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, stealing intelligence to provide to a foreign entity. But what, exactly, Ortis did and the extent of the damage has not yet truly come to light.

Over at Global News, reporter Sam Cooper has a source that says that Cameron Ortis was having money problems, and that this was his motivation for his activities. This corroborates prior reporting and some of my initial hypotheses about motivation – that Ortis acted for money, not out of ideology. (This is important as in the aftermath of his arrest, much was made of the fact that Ortis speaks Mandarin. So far, we haven't seen anything to corroborate a China angle to this activity.)

According to this report, Ortis contacted at least two people to sell classified information: Vincent Ramos (Of Phantom Secure fame) and Salim Henareh. The second name appears to be new information.

It also makes the Ortis story more complicated. Henareh is a business associate of the US-sanctioned Khanani money laundering organization. Ortis allegedly contacted Henareh to sell information to this individual. Henareh is a business associate of a wealthy currency shop owner named Farzam Mehdizadeh. Mehdizadeh is a business association of Khanani.

So, the connections appear to go as such: 

Ortis -> Henareh -> Mehdizadeh -> Khanani

 If you are skeptical of the strength of the connection to Khanani, I am as well. Cooper lays it out in more detail, but there are definitely some layers to this that are worth considering. Hawala / illicit financing networks overlap all the time. The question is: is this the same network? The Answer: We cannot be sure.

In this sense, the terrorist financing connection may be a bit over-stated. This, in particular, caught my eye: "many of Khanani’s transactions helped arm and finance terrorist organizations including Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda".

Technically, this is true, because the movement of funds is an aspect of financing. But moving funds for terrorist groups (and in this case, operating an illicit financing network) is really different than actually funding a terrorist organization.

Basically, there's no evidence presented here that Khanani funded terrorism. Instead, his network provided financial services for terrorist entities. Obviously, this is not a good thing, but it is also a bit more precise, which is important when thinking about these cases.  

To be fair to the report, I wouldn't be surprised if Khanani had funded terrorism. However, in my experience, people who run illicit finance networks are not big on donations to terrorist groups unless they absolutely have to be. So, for example, to pay protection money / or "taxes" or unless they're ideologically aligned.

Wall Street Exchange, a money service business (MSB) in Dubai, is implicated in this story. Cooper’s reporting indicates that it was involved in some transactions relating to terrorism. However, it is also important to remember that many banks and MSBs have also been implicated in terrorist activities in this way. Remember that Sun Trust, an American bank, was found to have processed transactions for the 9/11 hijackers.

Another key caveat here is DEA intelligence. In my experience, they are one of the least reliable US intelligence partners. They often claim there are links to terrorism with certain activities, but upon deeper analysis, these arguments do not stand up to scrutiny and/or cannot be substantiated.

In summary, the Ortis case against proves to be a challenging case full of twists and turns. Cooper’s report is long, and it suggests some very interesting revelations to come when Ortis goes to trial.

My big takeaway from this new report is that Ortis had more than one client (or prospective client), was not caught right away, was likely financially motivated, sought to profit from RCMP and Five Eyes money laundering investigations, and warning signs were ignored.

Sadly, this story just gets worse and worse.