The government of Canada has reached a financial settlement with one of two Canadian men it claims were arbitrarily detained for nearly three years by China in a retaliatory move, the man’s lawyer said.
John K. Phillips, representing Michael Spavor, told The Associated Press Wednesday evening that “I can only say that the matter between Mr. Spavor and the Government of Canada has been resolved.”
Mr. Spavor, a businessman who had extensive dealings with North Korea, and Michael Kovrig, then a Canadian diplomat who was on leave and working for a foreign policy analysis group based in Belgium, were arrested in China in December 2018. They were accused of espionage.
Their detention in separate prisons was, according to Canadian officials, punishment for Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, then chief financial officer of Chinese technology giant Huawei. This arrest was made at the request of the United States.
China released the two men in September 2021 after the US Justice Department struck a deal allowing Ms Meng to return to China in exchange for admitting wrongdoing in a fraud case.
The arrests of Spavor and Kovrig underlined the apparent willingness of the Chinese government under Xi Jinping to use arrests and long prison sentences to pressure Western governments into making concessions. They also made it clear that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to improve Canadian-Chinese relations, which had become antagonistic under previous governments, had failed.
Last year Mr Phillips said he was seeking C$10.5 million for Mr Spavor. The Globe and Mail, citing an anonymous source, reported late Wednesday that the sum was about $6 million.
Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, released a statement that made no mention of any solution.
“China’s arbitrary detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig was unjust and unacceptable,” the statement read. “While the 1,019 days they were arbitrarily detained by China will never be erased, the Government of Canada is committed to supporting them in their efforts to open a new chapter in their lives based on individual circumstances and impacts, and to recognize of their ordeal and the suffering caused by their arbitrary detention by China.”
The ministry declined further comment.
Mr. Kovrig told the Globe and Mail in December that it was also looking for a solution from the government and said he would donate any amount beyond the lost income and expenses incurred to charity. He told the Toronto-based newspaper that the report that the government offered each of the men C$3 million, or $2.2 million, was “beyond even the realm of discussion.” The actual amount, he said, “is much less.”
In an email Thursday, Kovrig declined to comment on his talks with the government.
Almost no public information is available on the settlement talks, which were conducted privately and not through the courts. Scope a long article published last year by the Globe and Mail, and based largely on anonymous sources, says that Mr. Spavor accused Mr. Kovrig of causing his detention by China.
According to the newspaper, Spavor claims that China singled him out because he had unintentionally provided Kovrig with information about North Korea that the diplomat then passed on to Canadian intelligence. They, in turn, shared it with Canada’s allies.
In August 2021, Mr Spavor was sentenced to 11 years in prison, after being found guilty of espionage. Mr. Kovrig was awaiting sentencing at the time he was deported back to Canada.
Canadian officials have repeatedly denied that either man was involved in espionage and said China was engaging in a form of “hostage diplomacy” to force Ms. Meng’s release.
From his base in Dandong, China, Spavor ran an organization that promoted cultural travel to North Korea. He had several high-level contacts there and once met Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. In 2013, Spavor helped organize a highly publicized visit to North Korea by Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star.
In his email, Mr Kovrig said he had “never been involved in espionage activities”. He said: “Any suggestion that I was anything but open and honorable in my interactions with Michael Spavor is false.”
At the time of his arrest in China, Kovrig was on leave from the Canadian Foreign Ministry, which revoked his diplomatic immunity, and was working as a senior advisor for the International Crisis Group.
In his email, Kovrig said that during his time as a diplomat and advisor he worked to persuade China to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear weapons and missile programs. That work, he said, “involved talking to people who were knowledgeable about the country, doing analysis and making recommendations.”
Up until the time of his arrest, Kovrig’s government said, “the Chinese had given me no indication that they were against my work or my travel to China.” Chinese officials, he said, regularly invited him to meetings and to attend conferences, including an invitation from the People’s Liberation Army to appear as a speaker at a forum organized about two months before his arrest.
“The PRC mistakenly detained me as a political hostage to blackmail the Government of Canada,” he wrote, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “To say I was detained for any other reason is false government and amplifies Chinese propaganda.”
