Trudeau says Canadian police went public with Indian diplomat allegations to prevent more violence

TORONTO (AP) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that Canada's national police force went public with its allegations against Indian diplomats this week because it had to disrupt violent acts in Canada including drive-by-shootings, extortions and even murder.

The Royal Canadian Police said Monday it had identified India’s top diplomat in the country and five other diplomats as persons of interest in the June 2023 killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The RCMP also said they uncovered evidence of an intensifying campaign against Canadians by agents of the Indian government.

“We are not looking to provoke or create a fight with India," Trudeau said. "The Indian government made a horrific mistake in thinking that they could interfere as aggressively as they did in the safety and sovereignty of Canada. We need to respond in order to ensure Canadians safety.”

Niijar's killing has strained bilateral relations between India and Canada for over a year and boiled over this week as the countries expelled each other’s top diplomats over those allegations and other alleged crimes in Canada.

Trudeau said he has tried not to “blow up” relations with India and that Canadian officials provided evidence privately with their Indian counterparts who, he said, have been uncooperative.

“The decision by the RCMP to go forward with that announcement was entirely anchored in public safety and a goal of disrupting the chain of activities that was resulting in drive by shootings, home invasions, violent extortion and even murder in and across Canada," Trudeau said while testifying Wednesday before the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa.

Trudeau said Indian diplomats have been passing information about Canadians to the highest levels of the Indian government which was then shared with organized crime, resulting in violence against Canadians.

“It was the RCMP's determination that that scheme needed to be disrupted," he said.

RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said Monday police have evidence allegedly tying Indian government agents to other homicides and violent acts in Canada. He declined to provide specifics, citing ongoing investigations, but he said there have been well over a dozen credible and imminent threats that have resulted in police warning members of the South Asian community, notably the pro-Khalistan, or Sikh independence, movement.

Trudeau said India has violated Canada’s sovereignty. India has rejected the accusations as absurd.

India has repeatedly criticized Trudeau’s government for being soft on supporters of the Khalistan movement who live in Canada. The Khalistan movement is banned in India but has support among the Sikh diaspora, particularly in Canada.

Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.

Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Niijar’s murder and are awaiting trial.

Trudeau noted his government could have gone public with the allegations when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the G20 Summit in September 2023, but chose not to. He met with Modi and expressed concerns privately then.

“It was a big moment for India welcoming all the leaders of the world to New Delhi for a very important summit and we had the opportunity of making it a very uncomfortable summit for India if we went public with these allegations ahead of time," said Trudeau. “We chose to continue to work with India behind the scenes to try and get India to cooperate with us.”

Trudeau said that when he returned home India's response, particularly through the media, was to attack Canada.

Trudeau later went public in Parliament with the allegation that the Indian government might have been involved in Niijar’s killing. He said there were about to be media stories detailing the allegation of India's possible involvement in the killing of a Canadian Sikh on Canadian soil. He said he went public because of worries about public safety.

Canada’s foreign minister on Monday said violence in Canada has worsened since then.

The British government said India should cooperate with Canada’s investigation into accusations that its government has been involved in an escalating number of violent crimes in Canada. In a statement, the British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said India's cooperation with Canada’s legal process “is the right next step.”

A U.S. State Department spokesman told a news conference Tuesday that the U.S. had long been asking India to cooperate with Canadian authorities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, in Ottawa, on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the federal inquiry into foreign interference in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024.(Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press via AP)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seen past a TV screen showing a live transcription as he appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testifies at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testifies at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testifies at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — RTX Corporation, the defense contractor formerly known as Raytheon, agreed Wednesday to pay $950 million to resolve allegations that it defrauded the government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar.

The company entered into deferred prosecution agreements in separate cases in federal court in Brooklyn and Massachusetts, agreed to hire independent monitors to oversee compliance with anti-corruption and anti-fraud laws and must show good conduct for three years.

The money the company owes includes penalties in the criminal cases, as well as civil fines, restitution and the return of profits it derived from inflated Defense Department billing and business derived from alleged bribes paid to a high-ranking Qatari military official from 2012 to 2016.

The amount includes a $428 million settlement for lying to the government about its labor and material costs to justify costlier no-bid contracts and drive the company's profits higher. The company was also accused of double-billing the government on a weapons maintenance contract.

It also includes nearly $400 million in criminal penalties in the Brooklyn case, involving the alleged bribes, and in the Massachusetts case, in which the company was accused of inflating its costs by $111 million for missile systems from 2011 to 2013 and the operation of a radar surveillance system in 2017.

It also agreed to pay a $52.5 million civil penalty to resolve a parallel Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and must forfeit at least $66 million to satisfy both probes.

At a brief hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, lawyers for RTX waived their right to an indictment and pleaded not guilty to charges that the company violated the anti-bribery provision of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act and the Arms Export Control Act. They did not object to any of the allegations in court documents filed in conjunction with the agreement.

RTX said in a statement that it is “taking responsibility for the misconduct that occurred” and is “committed to maintaining a world-class compliance program, following global laws, regulations and internal policies, while upholding integrity and serving our customers in an ethical matter.”

A message seeking comment was left for the Qatari embassy in Washington.

RTX said in a July regulatory filing that it set aside $1.24 billion to resolve pending legal and regulatory matters. The company's president and CEO, Christopher Calio, told investors that the investigations largely involved issues that predated the Raytheon-United Technologies merger that formed the current company in 2020.

“These matters primarily arose out of legacy Raytheon Company and Rockwell Collins prior to the merger and acquisition of these companies,” Calio said. “We’ve already taken robust corrective actions to address the legacy gaps that led to these issues.”

According to court documents, Raytheon employees and agents offered and paid bribes to a high-ranking Qatari military official to gain an advantage in obtaining lucrative business deals with the Qatar Emiri Air Force and Qatar Armed Forces.

The company then succeeded in securing four additions to an existing contract with the Gulf Cooperation Council — a regional union of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and a $510 million sole-sourced contract to build a joint-operations center for the Qatari military, the court documents said.

Raytheon made about $36.7 million in profit from the Gulf Cooperation Council contract additions and anticipated making more than $72 million on the joint operations center, but the Qatari government ultimately did not go forward with the deal, prosecutors said.

In the price inflation case, Raytheon allegedly lied to the government about the costs it would incur in building three Patriot missile firing units — also known as missile batteries — leading the U.S. Army to agree to a $619 million contract.

In a 2013 email cited in court papers, a Raytheon employee told a Pentagon official that the company's expected costs had increased when, according to prosecutors, they had actually gone down. Prosecutors said the government overpaid for the weapons by about $100 million.

Raytheon was also accused of misleading the U.S. Air Force in 2017 about the costs associated with operating and maintaining a radar surveillance system, including by arguing that it needed to give employees lucrative compensation packages to maintain adequate staffing.

In reality, prosecutors wrote in court papers, the company “was secretly preparing to reduce the pay” of site employees “in order to improve the company’s profitability.”

The contract was fraudulently inflated by $11 million, prosecutors said.

Wednesday's penalties are just the latest legal fallout from RTX's business dealings.

In August, the company agreed to pay $200 million to the State Department after voluntarily disclosing more than two dozen alleged violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

Among the allegations were that the company provided classified military aircraft data to China and that employees took company-issued laptops containing information about missiles and aircraft into Iran, Lebanon and Russia.

FILE - The sky is reflected on the facade of Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems facility, Monday, June 10, 2019, in Woburn, Mass. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)