Former CSIS head sought in Quebec probe
5 people named in fraud investigation
MONTREAL The former head of Canada’s spy agency CSIS is being sought by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad amid allegations of fraud in one of the country’s most expensive infrastructure projects.
Arthur Porter, who is also the former director of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), is one of five people named Tuesday in arrest warrants targeting executives from MUHC and engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, which won the lucrative contract to design and oversee construction of the hospital.
The others being sought are former SNC-Lavalin senior executives Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aissa, former high-ranking hospital executive Yanai Elbaz, and Jeremy Morris, the administrator of a Bahamas-based investment company linked to the fraud allegations.
Porter and Elbaz are suspected of having accepted bribes from some of the others, the warrants say.
Elbaz, once a top McGill University Hospital Centre executive, was arrested Wednesday. He is scheduled to appear in a Quebec court Thursday.
The Conservative government now finds itself facing uncomfortable questions over its decision to appoint Porter — a medical doctor and cancer specialist — to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, which reviews some of the most sensitive files held by Canada’s spy service.
Porter became its chairman in 2010, but is currently living in the Bahamas, where he is undergoing treatment for inoperable cancer. Ben-Aissa is in a Swiss jail for charges related to millions in alleged bribes to various government officials in northern Africa.
Elbaz is being questioned by Surete de Quebec fraud investigators at their Montreal headquarters. The former administrator was in charge of planning major renovations to the Montreal General Hospital.
Although he described his work at the superhospital as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Elbaz quit the MUHC sometime after August 2011 for reasons that are not known.
Two former top SNC executives, who were already facing charges in Project Lauréat, are now wanted on new counts, confirmed Anne Frédérick Laurence, a spokesperson for UPAC.
Duhaime, who was forced to resign as CEO of SNC-Lavalin last March, is wanted on fresh charges of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, counterfeit, fraud against the government, secret commissions and money laundering. Duhaime was arrested in November and charged with fraud, breach of trust and producing a counterfeit document.