Court rules against wife of man who defrauded bank

Federal Court orders immigration case return to board for another deliberation

A Metro Vancouver woman whose husband defrauded the Bank of China of tens of millions of dollars will have to make her case to stay in Canada a second time to an immigration board.

Last February, the board’s Immigration Appeal Division granted Li Xue permission to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds despite her failure to disclose on a 2003 immigration application that her husband, Gao Shan, worked for the Bank of China.

At the time, he was already under investigation for defrauding the institution, a crime for which he was later convicted and is now serving a 15-year sentence.

The Canadian government appealed the ruling in Li’s favour to the Federal Court of Canada, and just won an order forcing the immigration board to take another look at the case.

Judge Michael Manson said the earlier decision to allow Li to stay “is not reasonable, intelligible or justified in light of the misrepresentation and lack of candour evidenced by the respondent.”

He laid out the long history of the case that began when Li applied as a skilled worker to immigrate to Canada with Gao and their daughter in 2003. She was approved in 2004 and the family arrived in Vancouver later that year.

Within months, China issued a warrant for Gao’s arrest in the massive fraud case and the Canada Border Services Agency “began its own investigation into the inadmissibility of Ms. Li and Mr. Gao in Canada,” Manson noted.

Both were deemed inadmissible in November 2006 on the grounds of the earlier misrepresentation. In 2008, the family members made refugee claims, which Li withdrew in 2012.

Claiming his family and friends in China were being pressured by government officials, Gao returned to his native land to face prosecution for fraud. His wife stayed behind in B.C.

In 2014, Li was deemed inadmissible to Canada again for the 2003 misrepresentation. She appealed on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, winning her case earlier this year.

The federal government fought back. The immigration minister appealed the February ruling, arguing at a hearing in Vancouver in August that Li’s failure to disclose her husband’s job was serious because she “facilitated his efforts to evade prosecution in China.”

The minister also alleged that Li “made an unfounded refugee claim which she withdrew after four years.”

Li argued that she qualified as a skilled worker at the time of her application regardless of her husband’s situation.

And she said “that nothing in the evidence suggests that the respondent was aware of the investigation of her husband in China before he came to Canada, given their distant and sporadic relationship,” Manson summarized.

“Ms. Li also maintained that her husband is innocent, and that she regrets that she did not review the application form more carefully which resulted in her omission of her husband’s work at the Bank of China.”

Manson ruled that the misrepresentation was serious enough to send the case back to a different board member for reconsideration.

He said the omission in her application “cannot be said to be a mere oversight — he was employed by the bank for 14 years.”

“While Ms. Li may not have known about his alleged criminality until after she and he came to Canada, there is no question that the deliberate omission of his employment with the bank, whether intentional or made with reckless disregard for her duty of candour, are material and serious in nature, and in this case may well have led to further inquiries by the immigration officer resulting in an inadmissibility finding,” Manson said in his Sept. 6 ruling.

“The saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ does not excuse Ms. Li’s material misrepresentation, or lack of candour, in waiting for over seven years to ‘come clean’ about her level of knowledge.”

Nothing in the evidence suggests that the respondent was aware of the investigation of her husband in China.