MONTREAL – A doctor who was once entrusted with keeping an eye on the country’s spy agency is now a wanted man.
An arrest warrant is out for Arthur Porter, the former head of the CSIS watchdog agency, for alleged fraud in one of the country’s most expensive infrastructure projects.
He is among the five people named in arrest warrants issued Wednesday by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, in the case of the $1.3-billion construction of a Montreal mega-hospital.
The others are: former SNC Lavalin senior executives Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aisa, Yanai Elbaz and Jeremy Morris, the administrator of a Bahamas-based investment company.
Fact file: Five faces behind Quebec arrest warrants
The warrants say the men are wanted on numerous charges – including fraud, breach of trust and document forgery. They say Porter and Elbaz are suspected of having accepted bribes from some of the others.
Porter was the director general of the McGill University Hospital Centre when the alleged fraud occurred.
He was also head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which he joined in 2008 before becoming its chairman in 2010.
Porter resigned under suspicious circumstances in 2011 and left the country. The federal government has since tightened the screening process for nominees to the intelligence committee.
Quebec’s provincial police anti-corruption squad has made numerous arrests over the last year in relation to ongoing scandals in the construction industry.
Duhaime, the former chief executive officer of engineering powerhouse SNC-Lavalin (TSX:SNC), had already been charged earlier this month with fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and issuing false documents.
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Duhaime and another former top executive, Ben Aissa, were charged in connection with a contract involving the building of the MUHC.
But police said the charges related to the Wednesday arrest warrant are separate from the ones Duhaime and Ben Aissa already face.
Duhaime is due back in court on May 23 and is not allowed to leave Canada. Meanwhile, Ben Aissa has been detained in Switzerland since April 2012 and is awaiting trial there on charges related to alleged corruption, fraud and money-laundering in North African countries, including Libya.
In a statement Wednesday, SNC-Lavalin said it had only just learned of the additional charges against Duhaime and Aissa.
“As we have stated repeatedly, SNC-Lavalin has and will continue to co-operate fully with all authorities who request our assistance,” the company said. “We have voluntarily turned over information that we have to local and other authorities for them to take any actions that they may consider appropriate.
“We are unequivocal that no unethical behaviour or illegal acts must ever be tolerated. We believe that anyone found to have committed any wrongdoing in connection should be brought to justice.
“As this matter is before the courts, we have nothing to add at this time to what we have said previously.”
Elbaz is a former high-ranking MUHC executive who served as associate director-general before quitting to go into private consulting in October 2011.
His name has come up during Quebec’s corruption inquiry, on a list of names of people who met with a controversial construction magnate at an exclusive Montreal club.
MUHC chair Claudio Bussandri called for the prosecution of anyone involved in criminal acts.
“The alleged actions of Dr. Porter and Mr. Elbaz are clearly contrary to our values and our code of ethics. Please rest assured that we will continue to monitor the situation and assess our options, including legal action,” he said in a statement.
“We wish to reiterate that the authorities have made it clear that no current employee or the institution itself are under investigation.”
The arrest warrants “bring clarity to the situation,” Bussandri said.
“I speak on behalf of the board of directors and the entire MUHC community in expressing our anger and sadness with the alleged behaviour of Dr. Porter and Mr. Elbaz,” he said.
The other person named in the warrants, Morris, is linked to a company called Sierra Asset Management, which police say served as an intermediary between SNC and MUHC officials.
Both Porter and Morris are listed on the warrants as living in the Bahamas.
Porter has kept a low profile since leaving Montreal in 2011, when questions were raised about his business dealings.
In a rare interview, he recently told CBC News that he has cancer.
In an interview at his health clinic in the Bahamas, Porter said he had done nothing wrong. He characterized the allegations against him as “spurious” and the result of a “witch hunt.”
“I mean it just seemed that there were attacks from all angles,” Porter told the CBC.
“I mean if you looked at each piece maybe you would say, ‘OK, maybe that’s an issue, that’s an issue.’ But it just seemed to be that I was responsible for the snowfall in Montreal.”
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae, himself once a member of SIRC, told The Canadian Press that Porter would have been privy to sensitive information.
“All the members of SIRC have top security clearance. They would routinely receive any and all information from CSIS that is asked for. They would be aware of the overall policy direction of CSIS, particular concerns of CSIS with respect to threats to the security of the country,” Rae said.
He also questioned the Harper government’s decision to appoint Porter to SIRC.
“The relevant question is: how did he get appointed? Who brought his name forward? Because the name of the chairman is a decision that is made by the governing party and by the prime minister.”
– With files from Canadian Press reporter Steve Rennie in Ottawa
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