Canadian Exec Who Quit Beijing-Controlled Bank Reveals Extent of China’s Reach

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing, on Jan. 16, 2023. VCG via Getty Images

Canadian communications consultant Bob Pickard, known for resigning from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) after alleging it was being controlled by Beijing, shared with MPs his “traumatic” experience working as a senior executive at the bank.

Mr. Pickard was invited to testify before the House Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship (CACN) on Dec. 11. This came six months following his June 14 abrupt resignation from the role of director general of communications due to concerns about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence within the Beijing-headquartered multilateral development bank.

He noted that CCP members hold some of the most influential positions within the AIIB, and identified AIIB president Jin Liqun as a CCP member and former Red Guard. He further alleged that Mr. Jin “often articulates Chinese government policy.”

“Even though I was supposedly in charge of all global communications for the bank, I subsequently discovered that Mr. Jin’s office, dominated by Communist Party members, was directly involved in crafting messaging with PRC [People’s Republic of China] media for the domestic Chinese market that differed from what the bank was communicating in English to overseas audiences,” Mr. Pickard said.

Among these messages was the effort to separate the AIIB from Beijing’s contentious Belt and Road Initiative. The infrastructure plan, spearheaded by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, was characterized by Mr. Pickard as the regime’s “geopolitical expansion project.”

In addition, G7 countries like Canada were “brandished like trophy members” to help attract Western capital for the AIIB and to mitigate potential hostile policy consequences from U.S. authorities, Mr. Pickard said.

The bank was created to foster economic development in Asia by financing key infrastructure in the region. Its current 109 members include most Asian countries along with Canada, Australia, France, the UK, and Russia. Japan and the United States are not members.

Alleged Control by CCP Agents

Mr. Pickard said he was aware of China’s intention, in creating the AIIB in January 2016, to have the institution serve as a “rival to the World Bank” and other Western-led multinational financial institutions.

He said that before assuming his role in March 2022, he had concerns about whether Beijing was “exercising undue influence at the bank.” However, he found reassurance in the bank’s published governance and the presence of Western members, which, he said, “allayed these concerns.”

However, after joining the bank, he quickly realized the Chinese regime was meticulously exerting control within the institution, including the placement of its agents, he said.

“In my own department, a CCP member ... was appointed as my personal assistant,” Mr. Pickard told MPs. “I found out that this Communist Party member, appointed as my assistant, was secretly reporting directly to the most senior party member in Mr. Jin’s office.”

He further alleged that in 2022, several months after joining the AIIB, the CCP’s influence within the president’s office gained strength with the arrival of a new colleague. The newcomer’s job description remained unclear except for being known as “the new Party guy.”

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Jin’s office underwent renovations, with the installation of security locks to control access for all AIIB staff. This change meant even non-Chinese officials, including the vice-president, for the first time had to be buzzed into his office, according to Mr. Pickard.

“This cocooning of the AIIB president is consistent with how the information he receives and the issues he decides are filtered through two CCP officials whose offices were closest physically to his inside of this bubble,” Mr. Pickard said.

Resignation

Mr. Pickard told MPs that he first attempted to resign in May 2022 to protest “the CCP’s pronounced, profound, and pervasive influence in the everyday operating business of the bank, and its toxic impact on the culture.”

“I was kind of shocked that the bank did not deny and did not confirm my allegations or concerns about CCP influence. I was simply informed that the president’s office did not like my raising the taboo CCP topic,” he said.

On June 14, Mr. Pickard announced his resignation in a social media post, saying the bank “is dominated by Communist Party members and also has one of the most toxic cultures imaginable.”

This time, he said, he was advised to flee China. He sought refuge in Japan later the same day, fearing retaliation by the CCP.

Also that same day, the AIIB issued a statement accepting Mr. Pickard’s resignation. The bank denied his allegations, describing them as “baseless and disappointing.” Then in July, the AIIB published a report after conducting an internal management review, stating that “no evidence of undue or improper influence” was found in the decision-making of its senior management.

Mr. Pickard rejected the bank’s report and said he has become a target of online misinformation following his resignation.

“Hundreds of pro-AIIB, pro-CCP bots on Twitter targeted me with insults, and I was accused of being an American agent of espionage, a white supremacist, a neo-colonialist, or part of some nefarious Canadian government plot to embarrass China,” he told the House committee.

Following Mr. Pickard’s resignation on June 14, Ottawa said on the same day that it was ceasing all activity at the AIIB while it investigates his allegations against the bank.

On Dec. 8, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that Canada is expanding its probe into the AIIB and will also indefinitely freeze its participation in the institution.

Ottawa’s review will prioritize several key aspects, including analyzing AIIB investments and the bank’s governance and management frameworks, “as well as assessing whether any further enhancements are needed to decision-making and project selection at the Bank.” The federal government will also examine the bank’s existing environmental and social governance safeguards, particularly regarding issues such as forced labour, complaints handling, and environmental impacts.

Reform

Canada applied to join the AIIB and was accepted in March 2017, becoming the bank’s first North American member. It officially joined the bank in March 2018 and proceeded to ratify its membership by committing roughly $256 million to acquire shares in the bank over five years.

The Opposition Conservatives have long called on Ottawa to divest its shares in the AIIB. On Oct. 23, MPs voted in favour of a motion asking the House of Commons Special Committee on Canada-China Relations to invite Ms. Freeland to appear as a witness in the committee’s examination of “Canada’s freeze in government-led activity” with the AIIB.

Mr. Pickard depicted his approximately 16-month tenure at AIIB as a “traumatic, dramatic” experience, stating, “I felt that [Canada’s] membership in this organization was not giving this country a single thing of tangible value that we could proudly explain to people here in our country, that their membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank would be delivering them back home.”

Mr. Pickard expressed disbelief in the prospect of an improved AIIB with the CCP at its helm.

“At the bank, I would say that so long as we have the current geopolitical situation, and so long as we have the Chinese Communist Party, trying to work to undermine Western democracies and to have China replace the United States as the number one power, it is impossible for that to happen,” he said.