Two Canadians accused of crimes in China met often
North Korea common interest of Kovrig, Spavor
To no one's great surprise, China has failed to offer any evidence for its recent allegation that Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor conspired to spy on the country.
Most western experts continue to view their detention as a bald act of reprisal against Canada. But despite having very different CVS — one is a former diplomat, the other a businessman who hobnobbed with North Korea's leader — the two Canadians were not strangers.
China's state-owned Xinhua news service said Monday that Kovrig was accused of “stealing and spying to obtain state secrets and intelligence,” using Spavor as an important source. The National Post has learned Kovrig and Spavor met several times in recent years, both when Kovrig still served in Canada's Beijing embassy and later when he worked as a China expert for a respected think tank.
“Michael Kovrig met Spavor a few times and obviously, after he went to work for the International Crisis Group, he continued to see him during his trips to China,” said Guy Saintjacques, ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016 and Kovrig's boss at the embassy.
“It's still very difficult to have good information about what's going on in North Korea, and here's this guy, Michael Spavor, who's buddy-buddy with Kim Jong Un. And so Michael spoke with him, and there was very interesting information — nothing I would classify as top-secret — but just to know more about the type of person Kim Jong Un is.”
The revelation of their relationship may offer some hints as to why Beijing chose the pair as what western critics call “hostages” in the Huawei affair — and connects back to an earlier Canadian ordeal at the hands of China's security apparatus.
The diplomat first encountered the entrepreneur after travelling to Dandong, Spavor's base just across the Yalu River from North Korea, and visiting a coffee shop owned by two other Canadians, said Saint-jacques.
Those unlikely restaurant proprietors — Julia and Kevin Garratt — would themselves be swept up in a traumatic and very similar national-security investigation, during which they say they were grilled about diplomats who frequented their café.
Spavor and Kovrig were seized without warning on Dec. 10, days after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, an executive at the Huawei telecommunications giant and daughter of its founder.
Then came the espionage allegation, shortly after Canada's Department of Justice announced it would proceed with a U.S. request to begin extradition proceedings against Meng.
Saint-jacques said the Chinese clearly picked up the men as a tit-for-tat response to Meng's arrest, but might also have been suspicious about two foreigners discussing the inner workings of China's one formal ally.
“I don't know what kind of discussion the two had but maybe at some point they discussed the Chinese presence in North Korea, and of course the Chinese would consider this top secret.”
Kovrig left the foreign service in 2016, becoming a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group (ICG), an NGO whose motto is “Preventing War. Shaping Peace.” He has had a decade of “good and productive” engagement with China and done nothing to harm it, stresses the organization.
Karim Lebhour, an ICG spokesman, told the Post Wednesday he didn't have any knowledge of Kovrig's interactions with Spavor, “if any.” The Canadian's research responsibilities covered the Koreas, as well as China and its foreign policy, the group says.
Spavor's Paektu Cultural Exchange arranged for business, academic, sporting and tourist trips into North Korea. He organized EX-NBA star Dennis Rodman's controversial visits to the country and is one of the few westerners to have spent significant time with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Last August, an article from Hong Kong's South China Morning Post that quoted both him and Kovrig on the prospect of Chinese investment in North Korea was posted to Spavor's Facebook page. The Facebook post highlighted the quote from Kovrig.
There is certainly no sign Kovrig was trying to unduly ingratiate himself with Chinese authorities as a way to deflect suspicion.
The ex-diplomat's ICG papers are mostly factual, but also contain criticism. An article on Chinese involvement in Africa, for instance, worried about Beijing exporting its “authoritarian playbook, in which the law and its enforcers are instruments of party and state power.”
Three days before he was arrested, Kovrig tweeted about a Financial Times article that recommended banning Huawei from the U.K.'S 5G cell network, calling it “Sensible cautionary advice.”
But with his former job as an embassy political officer taking him throughout the country, he would have been under surveillance “for some time,” said Saint-jacques.
“Diplomats who speak Mandarin and go around China, most of the time they are suspected of being spies,” the ex-ambassador said.