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The head of Canada’s spy review board wired $200,000 in personal funds to a notorious international lobbyist in a questionable aid-for-infrastructure deal in Africa, the National Post has learned.

Arthur Porter, the federally appointed chairman of Canada’s Security and Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), described in three interviews how he directed cash from a foreign bank account to Ari Ben-Menashe, a jet-setting, Montreal-based businessman who often acts as a middleman in negotiations between the Russian Federation and developing countries.

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“This is a file that I’ve tried to put in the very back recesses of my mind,” Dr. Porter told the

National Post

, in response to his dealings with Mr. Ben-Menashe. “Maybe it was a hoax,” he added. “It was a little too skatey…. It was not traditional business as I understand it. It was a peculiar deal.”

And precarious business for a man in, as he says, “sensitive positions.” Dr. Porter was appointed to SIRC’s five-member committee by Canada’s Privy Council Office in 2008, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister’s Office. He was made its chairman last year. An oncologist and hospital administrator by profession, he is one of only two physicians ever to be appointed to SIRC’s committee, which historically has been dominated by former politicians.