The RCMP has shut down yet another investigation into the alleged criminal activities by a trio of Taiwanese brothers, who have brought in more than 3,000 Asian families into Canada.

The Asian Pacific Post has learned that the latest investigation into alleged fraud by the brothers, was quietly closed after lawyers for Immigration Canada met with the RCMP's Immigration and Passport section in Surrey.

Also at the meeting held late last year was legal counsel for the brothers, Timothy, Gordon and Robert Fu whose company, Imperial Consultants had offices in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Burnaby, B.C. This is the fourth known investigation in Canada involving the brothers which have been shut down over the last 10 years.

Corporal Robert Read

Ironically, an RCMP officer, Corporal Robert Read, who investigated the brothers and went public with the information, has been fired.

Two of the brothers, Gordon and Robert, meanwhile, have launched a multi-million dollar suit against the government of Canada claiming their reputations have been tarnished by official reports linking them to Triads or the Chinese mafia.

They are seeking C$60 million in damages. In their lawsuit filed in Toronto, the brothers claim Ottawa relied on 'rumours and gossip'... to unfairly shut down their Canadian immigrant investor funds.

Immigration lawyers said the civil case will shed light on the dark areas of a government program that offered permanent residency in exchange for a $250,000-to-$350,000 investment in the Canadian economy. The program was revised in 1996. The program described by the government's own auditor as a massive scam that has little benefit to the taxpayer allowed as many as 80,000 immigrants to obtain Canadian citizenship between 1986 and the mid-1990s.

Almost 80 per cent of the successful applicants in the passport-for-sale scheme were wealthy Asians from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Imperial Consultants, processed Asian applications at less busy Canadian missions in Los Angeles, Rome and Buenos Aires for faster results.

At its height, Imperial and its associated companies and funds were controlling some $300 million in assets and investors' money. They had strong connections to government officials.

Among the influential people used by Imperial Consultants to wave its flag were former immigration minister Gerry Weiner and the husband of a Liberal cabinet minister.

In an interview before the latest RCMP investigation was shut down, Edward Greenspan, the lawyer for the brothers, said his case will show a "vendetta by the government against the Fu brothers. "It was the imagination of some civil servants that the Fu's were triad members because they looked triad and despite the fact they were cleared their businesses were impacted," Greenspan said.

Court documents filed by Imperial and 10 associated companies say the federal government falsely alleged:

- That the Fu brothers processed applications by prospective immigrants who did not put up sufficient money to qualify for the investor scheme.

- That applicants submitted fake documents. That the Fu family had triad, or organized crime, connections.

Greenspan said these rumours led to the government forming a special steering committee which was out to get the Fu brothers.

In its statement of defence, the government denies any vendetta. It contends that some of the Imperial-controlled funds were not playing by the rules, hence their suspension.

The government confirmed receiving reports that the Fu brothers were linked to the Chinese Mafia.

But government officials said the alleged criminal connections had nothing to do with the actions taken against Imperial and the related companies.

The Fu brothers' lawsuit is the latest episode in their often controversial involvement in Canada's immigration industry.

But despite what the RCMP and Immigration Canada contend is evidence against the family business, the authorities have been unable to make charges stick.

In 1996 Robert and Gordon Fu were charged with trying to bribe two senior Immigration officials with $50,000 each to change a departmental ruling that affected their business.

The Crown suddenly withdrew the case in September 1998 part way through a preliminary hearing.

According to investigators, the two did not dispute making contact with immigration officials John Martin and Michael Bradley.

"There were several problems . . . notes were not taken properly and witnesses were given access to each other's statements," assistant Crown prosecutor Mary Ellen Doody said after the case was withdrawn.

Doody, who handled the case, said there was also a concern about the demands by the defence for extensive disclosure, which could impact on other investigations.

Bradley, a senior investment adviser with Immigration Canada and one of whom the Fu brothers were originally accused of trying to bribe, said he was disappointed with the decision not to proceed with the case. "The Canadian justice system does not seem equipped to deal with these kinds of cases," said Bradley after the case was halted.

The Fu brothers' lawyer said his clients met the two senior immigration officials but there was no evidence to show an attempt to bribe.

In late 1996, the Immigration Department established a secret "steering committee," made up of high-level departmental officials, to shadow a probe by the Mounties looking into allegations that Imperial Consultants was engaged in a wide spectrum of fraudulent practices to get the firm's clients into Canada.The committee included a deputy minister.

RCMP officials and others familiar with such investigations said that having a special committee watch over the RCMP investigation was highly improper.

They said it gave the impression that the RCMP was a puppet and the bureaucrats were pulling the strings and directing the investigation. Calls for an inquiry into why such a committee was formed fell on deaf ears.

In another probe that ended without charges, the RCMP, as part of an investigation into alleged improprieties at the Canadian diplomatic mission in Hong Kong, looked at Imperial's business.

RCMP investigators said they had correspondence, allegedly between a third Fu brother, Timothy, and a "secret diplomatic contact" at the mission, who was said to have been helping fast-track applications.

RCMP investigators in Ottawa had been given letters and notes addressed to the "contact" dated in 1992 that were signed by a principal of Imperial Consultants.

The correspondence involved the processing of immigration files and the RCMP had been told that the contact had top-level access to Canada's Computer Assisted Immigration Processing System. RCMP Cpl. Robert Read, who was one of a series of officers assigned to investigate allegations of improprieties at the Canadian mission in Hong Kong, confirmed he told his supervisors about the alleged secret contact. Nothing came of that investigation.

Read, a 26-year-veteran of the force, who went public with the information was fired this month by the RCMP. He had accused the top RCMP brass of a cover up.

In another investigation involving Imperial Consultants, RCMP was working with the Royal Hong Kong police to look at a fake receipt given to a Chinese family planning to migrate to B.C.

In that case, the immigration consultant Timothy Fu, was charged by Hong Kong police for fraud. But for some unknown reason Ottawa refused to send one of its officers to testify in the case in Hong Kong. A document about the case obtained by the Asian Pacific Post shows the officials at the Canadian diplomatic mission in Hong Kong pleading for help to get this case going as a deterrent to stop other similar scams.

Exasperated mission officials in a telex to Ottawa wrote: "This is turning into an embarrassing situation for this office as it was us who asked for RHKP's (Royal Hong Kong Police) assistance and requested an investigation. RHKP are now refusing to continue with their case until we confirm that, we the complainant will provide evidence. Surely if we are serious about receiving assistance in cases involving our missions than so are we prepared to cooperate with the investigating agency "read the telex.

Ottawa did not provide an officer and the case against Timothy Fu died.

"The Imperial Consultants case was the best case that we and Hong Kong police had ever seen and we were anxious for a prosecution . . . but this never happened and it died an unnatural death," said a foreign service officer based at the High Commission in the early 90s.

In the mid-nineties, Imperial Consultants was riding the crest of the immigration wave that preceded Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule. The company was among the top groups bringing in entrepreneurs via the investor immigration program. The government program described as a passport-for-sale scheme offered permanent residency in exchange for a $250,000-to-$350,000 investment in the Canadian economy.

David Webber, a forensic accountant who did an audit on Imperial Consultants in 1996 for Immigration Canada, found only four of the six investor funds run by the company were legitimate. Imperial's funds were then frozen pending a judicial review but again there was no prosecution.

"Some of the funds were not being properly monitored and people were using it to get into the country," said Webber, who went on to join the World Bank in Washington.

Despite the intense police scrutiny on Imperial Consultants and the ongoing investigations into their immigration business in the mid-nineties, the company's president Gordon Fu had a private meeting with Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

The private meeting of investors at his Chretien's Ottawa office was to discuss the sale of a hotel in the prime minister's riding.

The Feb 28, 1996 meeting was set up by Montreal-based Levesque Beaubien Geoffrion, a Quebec-based investment firm dealing with business immigrants. At the meeting Gordon Fu asked Chretien to help speed up his landed-immigrant application, according to a published report.

"Why shouldn't they let me in" Fu, who was earlier that year convicted in Taiwan on charges of forgery and tax evasion, was quoted as saying.

Chretien's aides declared that the meeting involved potential investors in the hotel, and that any letter requesting help to obtain landed status from Fu would have been passed on through "normal channels."

This case involving the Fu brothers is a mystery, said an RCMP officer who handled one of the files. "We could get no cooperation to proceed from Immigration Canada and were blocked several times...I do not know what to think especially when you put all the pieces together." he said.