HOLDING OUT FOR A HOMECOMING
Anne Bennett wonders if she’ll ever see her husband John alive again. The 81-year-old is serving time in a U.S. prison, where he struggles with failing health. American authorities will send him back — if they are paid a fine of over US$2 million.
Anne Bennett chokes back tears.
Instead of celebrating her 59th wedding anniversary, she’s wondering if her 81-year-old husband will survive in a U.S. prison, where he is struggling with diabetes, recuperating from a hernia operation, has suspected prostate cancer, and suffers hearing loss and blackouts.
“He has been such a stalwart person ever since we got married,” she said, her voice cracking. “He created numerous jobs for numerous people over the years, and now to have such injustice at the end when we should be going through …” She sobbed.
“Sorry — our golden years, you know?”
A continent away, her silverhaired partner, John Anthony Bennett, marks time in a threemetre by four-metre cubicle with a tier of bunks, designed for one, home to three.
The inmates take turns getting dressed.
Bennett was snared in a New Jersey, Sopranos-style scam — the wheels of commerce illegally greased with kickbacks, tickets to an executive box for a hockey game, a Mediterranean cruise, a plasma TV, whatever it took, even a complimentary wine cooler.
“I didn’t know what was going on at the time,” he lamented during a series of recent interviews and email exchanges. “I lost everything — my money, my stock, my house — I guess you know all that.”
Extradited to the U.S. in 2014, Bennett was convicted last year of conspiring to pay $1 million in kickbacks and defrauding the U.S. government.
He is serving five years at Allenwood federal correctional complex, a sprawling Pennsylvania penitentiary housing thousands.
Ottawa prepared for him to come home to complete his sentence, but the U.S. Department of Justice insisted on a pound of flesh — or, more exactly, that he pay more than US$1.9 million in restitution before his repatriation.
For his family and friends, it is an ignominious and undeserved end for a good man. patents and extensive community service.
He was granted 15 different patents — including for some of the biggest oil skimmers in the world, capable of recovering up to 3,300 barrels of spilled oil an hour.
His boom-and-skimmer technology, for instance, was used to help clean up the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster and many of the world’s worst spills since.
He was a booster of Outward Bound — which named the Bennett Mountain School in Pemberton after him — and he gave generously to the Salvation Army.
In 1987, Bennett helped found the Canadian Environmental Industry Association, which hosted the first GLOBE trade show in Vancouver.
Billed as North America’s largest and longest-running conference “dedicated to business innovation for the planet,” GLOBE celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with a keynote speech from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
As chairman of the association for its first 13 years, Bennett pushed for environmental policy reforms and to establish crossborder standards with the U.S.
He was someone who made a difference.
Born in Cardiff on Dec. 18, 1935, Bennett grew up poor in the shadow of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the son of an itinerant Welsh electrician and a seamstress.
Despite dyslexia, he earned his certification as an engineer, and managed factories that produced PCPs and PCBs for Monsanto, the same chemicals that his own company would later specialize in cleansing from contaminated soil. Monsanto recognized his talents and, within two years, he was promoted and ultimately became a chief engineer managing 200 people.
With his wife and three young children (Nigel, Jane and Susan), Bennett immigrated to Canada in 1966 seeking a better life.
In 1968, he formed his first company, Aqua Clean, based on power-washing machinery he had designed for Monsanto.
Finding initial success cleaning at Vancouver Island pulp mills, Bennett began winning contracts for factories, bridges, roads and other infrastructure.
His big break came in 1969 when an oil platform off Santa Barbara blew, spewing oil into the Pacific for two months.
Aqua Clean landed a massive contract and reclaimed more than 50 kilometres of beaches.
Bennett went on to develop his specialized booms to corral floating oil and skimmers to remove the gunk, rebranding his firm as Aqua Guard.
It gained recognition dealing with spills in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, the South China Sea and off Alaska before Bennett sold it in 1975.
He formed a new company, Bennett Environmental Consultants, in 1978.
Working through the Canadian International Development Agency, he provided expertise to countries such as Venezuela, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines and China for dealing with major spills.
Simultaneously, Bennett formed another firm based on technology he patented to remove barnacles and other debris from ship hulls.
It earned numerous contracts with the U.S. navy — so many, in fact, that he opened a factory in Seattle.
In 1992, his children Nigel and Susan took over the firm and Bennett pursued other projects.
His work with toxic soils, though, led to his imprisonment.
In the early 1990s, Bennett developed a prototype for a kiln system to incinerate oily wastes in an environmentally sound way.
He formed Bennett Environmental Inc. or BEI.
Unfortunately, treating oily waste proved unprofitable and Bennett turned his attention to opportunities dealing with other hazardous materials, particularly PCBs and PCPs — the first widely used as industrial coolants for electrical equipment and the second widely used as a wood preservative.
Bennett spent another three years improving his kiln to reach the high temperatures required to vaporize such chemicals, which he had first worked with at Monsanto. He bought a plant in Chicoutimi, Que., and upgraded it.
By 1995, the niche business blossomed. The firm became a major player in industrial soil remediation with contracts across the continent.
In 2000, the company moved its headquarters to Toronto from Vancouver. Bennett, at 65, remained behind, taking his first step toward retirement.
Day-to-day operations were handed off to others while Bennett and Anne started spending several months of each year at their California vacation home.
Between 2001 and 2004, BEI won huge contracts for the treatment of soil saturated with creosote from a New Jersey site supervised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Initially, these deals made BEI a darling of the stock market, pushing its shares to dizzying heights. Nevertheless, during this period, corporate infighting over Bennett’s role led to him leaving the company in 2005.
At 70, he considered it enforced retirement, but it coincided with allegations about stock-manipulation and corporate impropriety.
BEI settled those complaints without admission of wrongful conduct.
Soon after Bennett’s departure, though, news also broke about a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the New Jersey contracts.
With most of his wealth in BEI shares, Bennett lost nearly everything when the stock collapsed.
At BEI’s peak in April 2002, it traded at $31.50 a share; Bennett sold in 2006 at roughly 50 cents and was forced to return to work to pay his mounting legal fees.
In 2007, he helped found Global Bio-Coal Energy Inc. to develop a process to convert waste wood into a charcoal-like replacement for coal.
Shortly afterwards, the U.S. authorities accused BEI of paying kickbacks to get a look at competing bids before filing its offer in contract tenders.
Bennett was charged in August 2009 in spite of his insistence that others initiated and executed the conspiracy while lining their pockets and dining out on BEI’s dime.
He was forced to leave Global Bio-Coal to defend himself, maintaining he was so out of the loop and incredulous about the allegations that he had stupidly held onto his shares as BEI tanked.
Bennett fought extradition to the U.S. for five years before finally being returned for trial.
When the legal dust settled last year, the former manager of the American contractor that had hired BEI had been sentenced to 14 years and nearly a dozen others were convicted, including two other key BEI employees.
Bennett was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment, handed a US$12,500 fine and ordered to pay restitution of US$3,808,065.72.
His appeal was rejected.
Bill McIntyre, of Penticton, launched a lobbying campaign to have his longtime friend and former boss transferred to Canada — writing to the prime minister, leading Liberal MPs including Pamela Goldsmith-Jones (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast), and opposition members.
Like other loyalists, he believes the evidence shows Bennett was railroaded by an overzealous prosecution based on witnesses who lied to gain plea deals.