When the Chinese government wanted Canada to extradite an allegedly corrupt businessman in 2011, it turned to a Toronto lawyer and erstwhile friend for advice.

Ping-Teng Tan suggested a strategy for “repatriating” Lai Changxing that Beijing followed. “I helped the Chinese government solve a very difficult problem,” he boasted to the state-run Phoenix TV network in a 2015 interview on how China could get other such fugitives out of Canada.