A now-suspended Toronto lawyer has been ordered by an Ontario court to pay two sets of clients more than $1 million after they sued him for keeping proceeds from the sales of their home and business.
Ping Tan, who is now retired, is a well-known figure in the Toronto Chinese community and has been a prominent ally of the Toronto Chinese consulate for decades.
Tan was recently suspended from practising law in April. The Law Society of Ontario’s decision came after a former client complained that Tan didn’t return over half a million dollars owed from selling the client’s home and business. In response to its investigation, Tan told the Law Society that he is retired and had informed his clients that his firm had ceased operations.
Tan didn’t respond to a lawsuit filed by one of the clients in March. As a result, an Ontario Superior Court judge found him in default and ordered him to pay the client the money owed. According to a CBC News report, Mr. Tan has not yet made the payment.
Tan is facing two additional lawsuits. In one case, he is being sued for not returning $550,000 from the sale of a client’s house before closing his law firm. In another case, he is accused of “fraud, theft, and misappropriation” for keeping $216,000 in a similar situation, according to the National Post.
Tan’s law firm has shut down its website and email, and the firm’s phone line is no longer in service. He has not returned past requests for comment.
China Links
Tan has been a longtime executive of the National Congress of Chinese Canadians (NCCC) and the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations (CTCCO). Both groups have been noted by former intelligence officials for their close links to Beijing or engaging in activities aligned with Beijing’s political objectives.
Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese consulate official in Sydney who defected in 2005, said during a 2007 visit to Canada that the NCCC is at the top of a pyramid of groups set up by the Chinese embassy and consulates in Canada to control and influence the Chinese community and the Canadian government. The NCCC had denied the allegations, accusing Chen of “making untruths.”
Former CSIS senior manager Michel Juneau-Katsuya has said CTCCO is one of the organizations often praised by Chinese officials, and that leaders of such organizations are often invited to China for various celebrations and “special meetings.” CTCCO has not returned past requests for comment.
Tan is also known for establishing several Chinese organizations in Canada linked to Beijing’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), an agency described as a primary foreign interference tool of the Chinese regime, according to a 2020 analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute cited by Public Safety Canada.
In 2018, the UFWD merged with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, an office under China’s State Council in charge of influencing Chinese diaspora communities.
Tan has held legal advisory positions within organizations supervised by the UFWD, including the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, according to Chinese state media People’s Daily. In a Jan. 10 press release from the organization, Tan was identified as an “overseas member” of the organization’s legal advisory committee and was noted for hosting a vice chair who was visiting Canada.
Tan played a key role in creating the Chinese Canadians for China’s Reunification in the Toronto area in 2000 and has been its chairman since 2017. In 2001, he established a similar organization, the Canadian Alliance for China’s Peaceful Reunification. His efforts were praised in a January article by a Chinese United Front organization, supervised by Wang Huning, one of the top officials in the Chinese Communist Party.
Tan’s organizations have actively protested Canada’s criticism of Beijing’s human rights abuses and related measures. This includes issuing a joint statement in March 2021, condemning Canadian MPs for passing a motion that recognizes Beijing’s oppression of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China as genocide.
In a June 2019 statement, one of the organizations also condemned participants of a massive pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The Chinese regime faced severe international criticism for its brutal handling of protesters, including the use of rifles and other weapons.
