Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Ar­rest­ed on cor­rup­tion charges in Pana­ma last month, Dr Arthur Porter once had plans to ex­tend his chain of can­cer clin­ics to T&T.Porter was ar­rest­ed en route to T&T in May on charges of con­spir­a­cy, em­bez­zle­ment, fraud and breach of trust against the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment.Porter and his co-de­fen­dants–for­mer CEO of the Cana­di­an con­glom­er­ate SNC-Lavalin Group Inc Pierre Duhamie and its for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Ri­adh Ben Ais­sa–are fac­ing charges in con­nec­tion with a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar bribery scan­dal.

SNC-Lavalin has been re­tained by the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion to build the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal for the T&T Gov­ern­ment.Three years be­fore his ar­rest, T&T Guardian re­porter Yvonne Ba­boolal in­ter­viewed Porter in No­vem­ber 2010, while he was vis­it­ing Trinidad. At the time he said he want­ed to bring can­cer treat­ment in T&T to world-class stan­dards.Jok­ing that "I have lots of jobs. I live on a plane," he said as a can­cer physi­cian he had tried to help busi­ness en­ti­ties in the Caribbean de­vel­op first-class can­cer fa­cil­i­ties.

In 2009, he made con­tact with Dr Ru­pert In­dar Jr, di­rec­tor of South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic."We talked about putting the two cen­tres (in T&T and the Ba­hamas) to­geth­er and de­vel­op­ing a Caribbean net­work of can­cer care," Porter said.But his talks with his T&T col­leagues went no fur­ther and there was no "man­age­ment re­la­tion­ship."

Porter ap­pears to have ex­ag­ger­at­ed his busi­ness in­volve­ment in T&T. An on­line news agency called Tri­bune 242 re­port­ed on Ju­ly 1, 2012, that since 2011, Porter's ten-year-old Ba­hamas Can­cer Cen­tre had ex­pand­ed and was "forg­ing a man­age­ment re­la­tion­ship in Trinidad, be­gin­ning con­struc­tion of a new cen­tre in An­tigua and es­tab­lish­ing an out­reach clin­ic in the Turks and Caicos Is­lands."

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, In­dar said he and Porter had held dis­cus­sions with Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan in 2011, but ex­plained that Porter was in no way af­fil­i­at­ed with his clin­ic.In­dar Jr, whose fa­ther, Ru­pert In­dar Snr, is the chair­man of the board of South­ern Med­ical, said Porter was not a share­hold­er or a di­rec­tor.He said: "Dr Porter is an on­col­o­gist with for­eign fi­nanciers and they ap­proached us, as the lead­ing on­col­o­gy cen­tre, to see if they could fi­nance a project with us at the Min­istry of Health in 2011.

"There was no agree­ment. There was no con­tract. That was noth­ing more than dis­cus­sions."The last time I saw Dr Porter was when he met the Min­is­ter of Health in 2011. The last time I saw him in Trinidad was when we had that meet­ing."Health Min­is­ter Khan yes­ter­day con­firmed meet­ing with In­dar in 2011 to dis­cuss de­vel­op­ing on­col­o­gy cen­tres but said he could not re­mem­ber if Porter was part of the dis­cus­sions.

"I know that Ru­pert In­dar Jr from South­ern Med­ical want­ed to de­vel­op on­col­o­gy through­out the coun­try," Khan said."We had a pro­pos­al to have a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship for the de­vel­op­ment of on­col­o­gy cen­tres in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try but we had al­ready em­barked on the na­tion­al on­col­o­gy cen­tre so we didn't fol­low through.

"At that time I told them if the project had to go, we would have to roll out a ten­der to give every­body a chance. It would have to be ten­dered by the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board."Porter's plans for T&T nev­er went fur­ther.

Fact­file on Porter

Porter was born in 1956 in Free­town, Sier­ra Leone, and stud­ied at Cam­bridge, Har­vard and Toron­to.In 2008, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Steven Harp­er made him head of the coun­try's spy watch­dog, the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Re­view Com­mit­tee, and a mem­ber of the Privy Coun­cil for Cana­da. He was al­so on the board of Air Cana­da.In De­cem­ber 2011, he re­signed as CEO of McGill Uni­ver­si­ty Health Cen­tre in Mon­tre­al af­ter sus­pi­cious busi­ness prac­tices emerged.

On May 27, 2013, Porter and his wife were de­tained by In­ter­pol. He was lat­er charged with fraud, con­spir­a­cy to com­mit gov­ern­ment fraud, abuse of trust, se­cret com­mis­sions and laun­der­ing the pro­ceeds of a crime.Porter's wife was al­so fac­ing charges of laun­der­ing the pro­ceeds of a crime and con­spir­a­cy.

The con­tract to build the su­per­hos­pi­tal was award­ed to SNC-Lavalin Group Inc, the same com­pa­ny that wants to build the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal. Two se­nior SNC-Lavalin ex­ec­u­tives were charged along with Porter.Porter is ar­gu­ing that he is too ill to stand tri­al. He was di­ag­nosed with ter­mi­nal can­cer by Karol Siko­ra, an on­col­o­gist who works with Porter in the Ba­hamas.Siko­ra al­so di­ag­nosed the con­vict­ed Locker­bie bomber, Ab­del­baset al-Megrahi, as hav­ing on­ly three months to live in 2009.

Megrahi, who had prostate can­cer, was re­leased from a Scot­tish prison on com­pas­sion­ate grounds, re­turned home to Libya and died in May 2012.