Anti-corruption unit to seek DNA proof of Porter's death
, Published on: July 2, 2015 | Last Updated: July 2, 2015 8:26 PM EDT, Source
Disgraced MUHC director Arthur Porter may be dead, but anti-corruption police still investigating what happened to the $22.5 million he and his co-accused allegedly pocketed are not taking anyone’s word for it.
Quebec’s UnitÉ permanente anticorruption announced Thursday it would send two investigators to Panama, to work with an RCMP liaison officer on site.
UPAC wants DNA proof of Porter’s death, and vows to follow the money well beyond his grave.
Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pÉnale, the provincial prosecutor’s office, said Thursday that the Crown had still not received any official confirmation of Porter’s death, which according to his biographer and lawyer in Panama occurred Tuesday in a hospital in Panama City.
“We need irrefutable proof of his death,” Boucher said. “In all court cases, when there’s a death the accusations are dropped and the judicial process is over. So before we get there we’ll be extremely prudent and we’ll be sure to have all the documents and the information corroborated and validated.”
Porter had said he had Stage 4 cancer before he was arrested in May 2013 while travelling through Panama. He spent two years in jail there, reportedly administering his own medicine, before being transferred to an oncology hospital in May.
UPAC spokesperson Anne-FrÉdÉrick Laurence said Porter’s death — if confirmed — will not end the investigation, however.
“There are other co-accused and the rest will go on even if someone has passed. We will continue our efforts to recuperate the money and protect it.”
So far, $17.5 million has been frozen from accounts associated with the Porters and their co-accused, which include Pamela Porter, Arthur’s widow.
She pleaded guilty in December to money-laundering — her part in the alleged scheme to defraud taxpayers by rigging the bidding process to build the new MUHC superhospital, which opened last month.
Porter and eight co-accused, including his right-hand man at the MUHC, Yonai Albaz, allegedly received $22.5 million in bribes to ensure SNC Lavalin won the contract, worth $1.3 billion.
Reached in Panama, Porter’s lawyer, Ricardo Bilonick, said he was appalled that Canadian authorities were still questioning Porter’s death.
“That’s a stupid attitude, and that’s the one that killed him,” said Bilonick, who has been Porter’s lawyer since his arrest, and was once ambassador to the United States with the government of Manuel Noriega before being convicted of international drug trafficking.
“The Panamanian and Canadian authorities knew that he had cancer in his lungs, liver and bones since the day he was detained. But no one did anything for him. … Now they don’t want to believe he is dead.”
According to Bilonick, the Panamanian foreign affairs minister ordered Porter transferred to a hospital back in January 2014, but corrections authorities and the national police refused to carry out the order.
“In May, when he was transferred to hospital it was because he was going to die in his jail cell.”
Meanwhile, while others on social media continued to question whether Porter was in fact dead, Parti QuÉbÉcois leader Pierre Karl PÉladeau posted a pseudo letter of condolence on his Facebook page to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, along with photos of Couillard and Porter, who were friends and had started a company together, though it was never active.
Within an hour PÉladeau’s post had 932 “likes”, and 357 comments.
Some congratulated PÉladeau for his good timing, and for reminding the public of Couillard’s hypocrisy, while others said using Porter’s death for political gain was undignified, and not worthy of a leader.
