Canada’s former ambassador to Spain was found to have misled Ottawa after the official government residence in Madrid was burgled twice in one year, documents obtained under the Access to Information Act reveal.

During one robbery, Malcolm McKechnie pretended to sleep as three robbers ransacked his bedroom and stole $500.

In an email debriefing to Ottawa, McKechnie neglected to mention that the residence was in one of Madrid’s safest neighbourhoods.

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The omission allowed him to justify his move to a furnished two-bedroom apartment, which cost taxpayers 5,300 euros a month, concluded a government investigative report. It said the omission amounted to a deliberate abuse of trust.

McKechnie told The Star that he was never disciplined and did not intentionally withhold information from the department.

“Whether the neighbourhood was deemed to be safe or not by whomever, it doesn’t change the fact that the (official residence) was broken into twice in one year, the second time by three armed robbers who spent 18 minutes in the place, including my bedroom,” McKechnie wrote in an email to The Star.

“This whole incident caused me considerable stress and trauma in the aftermath, preventing me from being able to sleep normally . . . In the end, the department, while sympathetic, made the decision that I either had to return to the (official residence) or end my posting. It was at that point that I decided to end my posting, return to Ottawa and retire.”

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has ordered that the investigation into the incident, as well as at least three others involving Canadian diplomats, be reopened, according to Baird’s press secretary.

All the cases took place before Baird became foreign minister in 2011, Rick Roth added.

The investigative report into the robbery and its aftermath, as well as other documents related to McKechnie’s posting in Spain, were released under the Access to Information Act in response to a request for records related to incidents of alleged wrongdoing, criminal activity or misbehaviour by Canadian diplomats or their family members. The documents covered Jan. 1, 2009, to Nov. 12, 2010.

The documents are censored; the names of those investigated, the locations and any penalties imposed have been blacked out. The Star has independently verified the identity of McKechnie and one other diplomat; the identities of the others remain unknown.

After the second burglary in a year at the ambassador’s residence in Madrid — the first robbery occurred before McKechnie’s arrival in Spain in November 2007 — improvements to the security system were made, although an email from embassy staff alleges that Foreign Affairs did not respond to three requests for additional security.

On Nov. 16, 2009, Foreign Affairs values and ethics adviser Claude Chartrand wrapped up an investigation into McKechnie and his stewardship of the Canadian mission in Madrid.

The investigation concluded that, even after the second break-in, security was not an acceptable reason to move and that McKechnie must return to the residence. “The crime rate in the neighbourhood where the (residence) was located was not that high,” Chartrand wrote in his report.

Chartrand wrote that he had a meeting with an Ottawa colleague, who told him that, as soon as the residence was secure, McKechnie “had to resume living there . . . it was unjustifiable, given the current economic context, to pay for two residences at the same time.”

McKechnie argued the department’s security detail had been negligent because they failed to tell him when he arrived in Madrid that there had been a break-in at the residence. After that robbery, security was hired but the guard was released after McKechnie’s arrival.

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Chartrand concluded that McKechnie committed an abuse of trust when he told an RCMP officer to remove a section of an email to Foreign Affairs officials that placed the residence in one of the city’s lowest crime rate areas. McKechnie told Chartrand that he thought the claim was “misleading and did not convey the reality of this neighbourhood.”

There were other concerns about McKechnie’s stewardship of the mission in Spain, as well.

In February 2009, Chartrand was approached by six employees at the Canadian mission in Madrid who asked for a private meeting.

The staffers accused McKechnie of, among other things, inappropriately borrowing 500 euros from his driver to buy tickets to a bullfight for friends and of making sexist comments.

Several of the complaints focused on a staff BBQ held in July 2008 at the official residence, when McKechnie allegedly asked a young intern to stay for a swim and to attend a Paul Anka concert with him.

“(McKechnie) stated that he noticed toward the end (of the party) when people were leaving that (name redacted) was still sitting beside the pool,” Chartrand’s report said. “He said that he didn’t want to kick her out, so he told her that she could stay longer if she wished and that he would give her a ride into the city later as he was going to a concert . . . ”

McKechnie denied he invited the intern to the concert.

Chartrand wrote that McKechnie’s borrowing cash from his driver was an “implicit abuse of power.” Inviting the intern to remain at the residence and accompany him to the concert amounted to “an embarrassment to his staff.”

McKechnie refutes the allegations.

“At no time was there any inappropriate behaviour on my part with any embassy employee,” McKechnie wrote in an email to The Star. “I found the reference to sexist comments particularly galling since it is simply not my style. I have worked with many female colleagues and bosses over a long career and always respected them and got along well with them.”

McKechnie said he was never disciplined for any of the accusations against him, although Foreign Affairs officials decided to withdraw an offer for him to work temporarily in the Canadian embassy in Rome.

“Given the circumstances, the decision may be that no action needs to be taken,” Janet Maclean, director of the values and ethics division at Foreign Affairs, wrote to then-assistant deputy minister Michael Small in May 2010. “However, I think we should have some sort of conclusion to the situation — even in the form of a note to file.”

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