Accused hospital fraudster ruled dead
Two years after his death in Panama, accused hospital fraudster Arthur Porter has been declared officially dead by a Quebec Court judge, ending a tedious exchange with Panamanian authorities for documented proof of death.
Crown prosecutors submitted in court on Friday morning Porter’s death certificate from Panama, along with an affidavit confirming the identity of the deceased. Judge Yves Paradis then issued the declaration of Porter’s death from the bench.
“The criminal charges (against Porter) have not been withdrawn, the accused is not acquitted,” said Jean Pascal Boucher, of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions. “(But) the file is closed because the accused is dead.”
Porter, the former head of the McGill University Health Centre, died in Panama on June 30, 2015, after a lingering illness with lung cancer. The 59-year-old radiation oncologist was accused of taking $22.5 million in bribes from the $1.3-billion MUHC superhospital construction contract.
Quebec’s anti-corruption unit said Porter’s alleged crimes amounted to the biggest act of fraud corruption in the country’s history.
Porter was arrested by Interpol agents in Panama on May 27, 2013, and he fought extradition to Quebec while incarcerated in La Joya prison.
Porter was once highly regarded among Canada’s business and political elite and served as head of the MUHC as well as on the board of the independent agency that oversaw Canada’s spy services.
Although provincial police investigators who flew to Panama two years ago said they positively identified Porter’s body in a morgue, Quebec authorities received the official death certificate this week.
“Since this involves Panama, it’s much more complicated,” Crown prosecutor Nathalie Kleber explained in an interview in June.
The lack of a death certificate fuelled speculation that Porter might still be alive and that he had faked his illness to evade the law. Porter’s own family sought to quell the conspiracy theories, insisting that he was truly ill with non-small cell lung cancer and they released his medical records as proof.
His wife, Pamela Porter, pleaded guilty in late 2014 to two counts of laundering the proceeds of crime and was sentenced to 33 months for her role in the alleged bribery scandal connected to the superhospital project.
The court proceedings against the other co-accused in the alleged MUHC conspiracy is continuing, Boucher added.