The lawyer for a Vancouver man held in a Bulgarian prison has accused the RCMP of misconduct and is calling for an immediate investigation by the Mounties' civilian review agency.

Michael Kapoustin, who owned several businesses in Bulgaria after the fall of communism in the early 1990s, has spent 12 years in prison for money laundering and other crimes he says he did not commit.

He claims the RCMP falsely linked him to another Canadian it was investigating in 1995 for money laundering, although he had never met the individual.

During a press conference Friday in Ottawa, Kapoustin's lawyer Dean Peroff said he has asked the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP treat his client's case as an urgent matter.

Peroff said the information the Mounties fed to Bulgarian authorities led to his arrest and subsequent torture in a case that he argued bears remarkable similarities to the case of Maher Arar.

"He maintains that members of the RCMP are complicit in his conviction of a crime that he did not commit," Peroff said.

Wife alleges Kapoustin beaten with rubber hoses

Kapoustin was eventually convicted on one charge of fraud, and then charged with a second count of embezzlement when the first charge was dismissed.

While awaiting trial, he was held for two years in solitary confinement where he was beaten by guards in black masks with rubber hoses, his wife Tracy alleged in an interview with CBC News in December.

She said she convinced her husband to plead guilty to the second charge, because Canadian officials were under the belief he would receive a short sentence and could be transferred to a prison in Canada under an extradition treaty.

But he was then sentenced to 17 years behind bars and the then-Liberal federal government refused to have anything more to do with his case, Peroff said.

The Conservative government took a hand in the case in 2006 and has repeatedly asked the Bulgarians to transfer Kapoustin to a Canadian prison for the balance of his 17-year sentence. Ottawa's efforts were initially rebuffed by the Bulgarians, but are continuing.

Peroff said he appreciates the current government's work, but he also wants the Mounties to admit that they fed false information to the Bulgarians.

Kapoustin has complained to the RCMP before, Peroff added, but they rejected his complaint on the technical ground that the officers involved in his case were no longer with the force.

He said Justice Dennis O'Connor's ruling in the Arar inquiry means the RCMP is duty-bound to correct the record, inform Bulgarian authorities of the false information and help secure Kapoustin's release.

With files from the Canadian Press