The former head of Canada’s spy agency watchdog is a wanted man.

Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has issued an arrest warrant for Arthur Porter, the former chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) and ex-boss of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).

Porter is among five people named Wednesday who are facing a total of 24-fraud related charges in Project Lauréat, a fraud investigation into the construction of a Montreal mega-hospital.

Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aïssa, a pair of former executives with lead contractor SNC-Lavalin, are already facing fraud charges. Wednesday’s announcement brought new charges to them, as well as Yanai Elbaz and Jeremy Morris.

The warrants detail incidents of fraud, breaches of trust and document forgery. The also described bribes and kickbacks allegedly paid to Porter and Elbaz, a former head planner for MUHC.

On Feb. 19, the Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC) raided Montreal City Hall and half a dozen other municipal buildings in search of evidence in the corruption case.

UPAC spokesperson Anne-Frédérick Laurence said that their office is working to bring the accused men back to Canada, but wouldn’t go into details on the arrest, or the alleged $22.5 million kickback paid to obtain the $1.3 billion contract to construct and maintain mega-hospital.

Porter has since fled to the Bahamas, and Ben Aïssa is currently detained in Switzerland under allegations that SNC-Lavalin had paid out bribes to the Gadhafi family to obtain contracts in Libya.

Porter was forced to resign from the SIRC under suspicious circumstances in 2011 after reports linked him in a commercial deal with Ari Ben-Menashe, a self described Israeli spy, international lobbyist and accused arms dealer.

Shortly thereafter, Porter left his post atop the MUHC, where he helped ink a $1.3 billion contract with SNC-Lavalin to construct the superhospital in Montreal’s west end.

Porter has recently gone public in January with his self-diagnosis of lung cancer, which is being treated at his cancer facility in the Bahamas.

The arrest warrants list Montreal addresses for Elbaz and Duhaime and an ‘unknown” for Ben Aïssa. Porter is listed as living in the Bahamas, in the same city as Morris.

According to reports, Morris is tied with the Bahamas-based Sierra Asset Management Inc., listed as in the warrants as having a fraudulent contract with SNC-Lavalin.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

SNC-Lavalin is under its own cloud of suspicion. Duhaime was relived as chief executive in March 2012 when a review revealed he signed off on $56 million in payments to undisclosed parties.

The embattled engineering giant is accused of paying the son of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi $160 million in kickbacks, which allegedly included the purchase of luxury yachts, to obtain major contracts.

Stephane Roy, a former SNC-Lavalin employee currently suing his employer for wrongful dismissal, recently told The Canadian Press the payment of commissions and kickbacks was part of the corporate culture.