Accused Mexican lawyer wins chance to stay in Canada

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A Mexican businessman and lawyer accused of aiding imprisoned former Veracruz governor Javier Duarte has won another chance at refugee status in Canada.

Moises Mansur Cysneiros recently won a Federal Court of Canada application to have his case reviewed again by the Immigration and Refugee Board’s appeal division after earlier attempts to get refugee status were denied.

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Judge Janet Fuhrer said the Refugee Appeal Division failed to fully consider the possibility that an RCMP warning to Mansur in 2017 about threats to his family might have been linked to political opponents in Mexico.

Mansur originally applied for refugee status in Canada six years ago, arguing that he faced persecution in his home country because of his long-time friendship with Duarte that dated back to when both men were in law school.

But the federal public safety minister asserted at two earlier hearings that Mansur was not eligible to remain in Canada because of allegations of tax fraud, organized crime and money laundering against him in Mexico that stemmed from the investigation into Duarte.

Duarte was convicted of money laundering and having criminal associations and sentenced in 2018 to nine years in jail.

Mansur asserted that Duarte’s political opponents, including Miguel Angel Yunes — who succeeded Duarte as governor — targeted him after he arrived in Canada. Yunes even travelled to meet Mansur in Toronto in 2016, urging Mansur to help implicate Duarte, the refugee board heard.

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The RCMP visited Mansur’s Vancouver house in February 2017 and told him about the threat to himself and his family, although no more details were provided.

The appeal division panel ruled that any link between the 2017 threat and rival politicians was “speculative.”

But Fuhrer said that finding was in error, given that the panel accepted evidence that Yunes had in fact travelled to Canada to meet with Mansur seeking incriminating information about Duarte.

The meeting was secretly recorded by Yunes and parts were later broadcast on a Mexican TV news show.

“As noted, the (Refugee Appeal Division) accepted that Yunes himself came to Canada and had a meeting with (Mansur), in which he questioned (Mansur) to an extent that (Mansur) felt intimidated. On its face, this meeting is evidence, in my view, of Yunes resorting to extrajudicial means to intimidate (Mansur),” Fuhrer said.

She said “it behooved the panel to explain why it found (Mansur’s) asserted linkage of Yunes to the RCMP incident speculative. The failure to do so was unreasonable.”

“This error is sufficient, in my view, to send the matter back for redetermination.”

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Mansur is also a citizen of Brazil but earlier claimed he would not feel safe in the South American country as Mexican political opponents could arrange to have him kidnapped there.

The Refugee Appeal Division panel ruled that Mansur “does not face a serious possibility of persecution or risk of harm in Brazil.”

During Duarte’s six-year term as governor, cartel violence was rampant in the Gulf Coast state. And Veracruz became the most dangerous place in Mexico for journalists. Seventeen were killed there. Yunes’ term as governor ended in 2018.

Mansur’s original refugee hearing was held behind closed doors in July 2018.

Postmedia successfully fought for more than a year to gain access to information about the case, although bans remain on the identities of his family members and witnesses who testified on his behalf.

In February 2020, Immigration and Refugee Board member Negar Azmudeh released her heavily redacted ruling in the case in which she accepted arguments by lawyers for the Minister of Public Safety that the Mexican charges against Mansur were so serious that he should not be eligible for refugee status here.

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“There is also insufficient credible evidence at hand to conclude that Yunes or anyone else in Mexico has tried to resort to extrajudicial means of intimidating or harming the claimants in Canada,” she said.

The Refugee Appeal Decision then weighed in, ruling in 2022 that Mansur was not a convention refugee, but disagreeing with Azmudeh that Mansur was automatically disqualified from making a refugee claim because of the allegations against him in Mexico.

kbolan@postmedia.com

X.com/kbolan

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