TIMELINE: A CRESCENDO OF SCANDAL
2003
September: Arthur Porter quits his job as CEO of the debt-ridden Detroit Medical Center. Between 2000 and 2003, the DMC lost $243 million.
2004
Jan. 30: Porter is named the MUHC’s CEO and executive director with a mandate to revamp the embattled superhospital project.
Also in 2004: Porter donates $3,000 to the Quebec Liberal Party. Over the years, Porter would make the maximum allowable contribution to the provincial Liberals and the Conservative Party of Canada on several occasions.
2005
Summer: Porter flies to Baltimore with Premier Jean Charest and Health Minister Philippe Couillard to persuade the Shriners at their annual convention to keep their pediatric orthopedic hospital in Montreal. Their gambit works and marks the beginning of a working relationship between Couillard and Porter.
2008
Sept. 4: Prime Minister Stephen Harper names Porter to the fivemember Security Intelligence Review Committee, the country’s spy-agency watchdog, entrusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets. Also on that day, the governor general appoints Porter to the Privy Council of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
2009
June 15: Porter and Couillard are elected directors of mining company Canadian Royalties, almost a year after Couillard resigned as Quebec’s health minister and as a member of the National Assembly. The two sat on the board of Canadian Royalties until Dec. 16, 2009.
Nov. 16: Sierra Asset Management is incorporated in the Bahamas. The company would go on to develop a multi-million-dollar business relationship with SNC-Lavalin.
Also in 2009: SNC-Lavalin signs a deal with Bahamas-based Sierra Asset Management to help secure the lucrative MUHC superhospital contract. The company, which has alleged ties to Porter, was paid $22.5 million in consulting fees from SNC over the years. Police allege the consulting fees were actually kickbacks.
2010
July 15: SNC-Lavalin signs a $1.3-billion, public-private partnership with the MUHC to build a hospital with 500 single-patient beds.
2011
Nov. 8: Sen. David Angus, chairperson of the MUHC board of directors, throws his support behind Porter, despite reports that he had business dealings with a reputed arms dealer while acting as the hospital network’s director.
Nov. 10: Porter tenders his resignation as head of the Security Intelligence Review Committee following news reports that he wired $200,000 in personal funds to Ari Ben-Menashe, a former international arms dealer based in Montreal, for an infrastructure deal in Porter’s native Sierra Leone that ultimately fell through.
Nov. 13: Amid growing concerns surrounding the MUHC’s financial woes and reports of Porter’s controversial business practices outside the hospital network, the MUHC’s board of directors convenes an emergency meeting to determine Porter’s future. Ultimately, the board decides to impose managerial restrictions on Porter.
Dec. 5: Porter resigns as head of the MUHC as reports of his business interests outside the hospital network continue to surface. The director’s business activities are an apparent violation of the Quebec Health Act. Despite the mounting controversy surrounding Porter, the MUHC throws two lavish farewell parties for him. Afterward, Porter moves to the Bahamas, where he runs a cancer clinic. The former MUHC head would later tell a Nassau-based newspaper he has inoperable lung cancer.
2012
Sept. 4: Police seize documents belonging to Porter during a raid of the McGill University Health Centre’s offices.
Nov. 9: McGill University sues Porter for more than $285,000, claiming he failed to fully pay back a low-interest loan that the university issued to him in 2008.
Dec. 18: A government report finds extensive financial mismanagement at the MUHC going back to when Porter was the hospital network’s director. Among the report’s findings: The MUHC paid its staff $30 million in unapproved funds between 2009 and 2012.
2013
Jan. 25: A Quebec judge orders Porter to reimburse McGill University more than $252,000 for failing to fully pay back a low-interest loan, as well as a salary overpayment from his duties as a professor.
Feb. 27: Quebec’s anti-corruption squad issues a warrant for Porter’s arrest on charges of fraud, conspiracy, breach of trust, taking secret commissions and money laundering stemming from its investigation of the contract to build the new super-hospital.
May 27: Quebec’s anti-corruption squad announces that Porter and his wife, Pamela, have been arrested in Panama, and that the extradition process is underway. Porter’s attempts to claim diplomatic immunity fail; Porter is held on an international arrest warrant in connection with an alleged $22.5-million kickback scheme in the construction of the MUHC’s new hospital, including money-laundering and conspiracy to commit a crime.
May 31: Porter is transferred to La Joya prison, home to about 4,000 inmates, an hour outside Panama City. He shares a room with six or seven other inmates in a prison wing reserved for foreigners, mostly drug traffickers. Pamela Porter was transferred to the women’s prison in Panama. Both institutions are overcrowded and unsanitary.
June 5: After 10 days behind bars, Pamela Porter opts for extradition to Canada. According to his oncologist, Arthur Porter was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in January, but his health has improved since he began treatment with Crizotinib.
Aug. 2: Pamela Porter is granted bail in her money laundering case in Montreal. Her later request to live in Florida to be closer to family while awaiting trial is denied.
2014
April 3: Philippe Couillard, in the running to become premier of Quebec, gets an unsolicited endorsement from Porter from his jail cell. Porter and Couillard started a consulting firm together in 2010, and occasionally went fishing together. Documents show the business never got off the ground.
May 16: Newly released figures show that on top of drawing a $241,000 annual salary and bonus as head of the McGill University Health Centre, Porter was awarded an “on-call indemnity” of more than $63,000 in 2010 to cover his “increased availability” at the MUHC. Porter also received a yearly car allowance of more than $17,000 for a luxury vehicle.
Sept. 3: Pamela Porter turns herself into police to face a new charge of money-laundering; her bail is revoked.
Sept. 10: Porter releases his “tell-all” memoir: The Man Behind the Bow Tie: Arthur Porter On Business, Politics and Intrigue, written from prison. Porter maintains his innocence, but admits that SNC-Lavalin courted him in 2005 to lobby for international contracts. Among his claims, he says Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged him in 2009 to discreetly lobby African and Caribbean nations in an unsuccessful campaign to win Canada a seat on the United Nations Security Council. He says Couillard called him daily for political advice. And in 2001, President George W. Bush phoned to urge him to become the next surgeon general of the United States. In prison, Porter says he enjoys the services of a personal cook who prepares his meals, a carpenter who fashioned a bed for him that converts into a desk, and a carpeted jail cell.
Dec. 18: Pamela Porter pleads guilty to money laundering. The 54-year old is sentenced to jail for two years minus a day.
2015
Jan. 12: Quebec authorities take steps to recover $17.5 million, out of the $22.5 million allegedly defrauded, by seizing properties belonging to Porter and his family in the Caribbean, Florida and Michigan and bank accounts in Canada, the Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, the U.S. and Porter’s native Sierra Leone.
Jan. 20: Porter’s extradition to Quebec is put on hold again as his lawyer continues to file legal motions before the Supreme Court of Panama challenging his detention in prison.
April 26: The first baby born at the new MUHC superhospital, which opens that day, breathes his first breath at 6:55 a.m. His parents name him Arthur. Because they love the name, they say, not because of Porter.
May 5: Porter is admitted to a hospital in Panama for emergency treatment as his family flies in to be with him.
June 15: Pamela Porter gets day parole and heads to a halfway house six months after she was sentenced to a two-year prison term. In its decision, Quebec’s parole board cites the fact she has not spoken to her husband for two years and has no intention to in the future.