La Joya fraud suspect holds center stage in Canada.

PANAMA’S most notorious prison, and one of its “star” prisoners awaiting trial in Canada on $22.5 million dollar fraud charges, continue to get media attention in Canada and elsewhere.Although said to be dying of cancer, Dr Arthur Porter appears to have lost no weight and conducts an ongoing PR campaign focusing on his plight, and claims to have written a book telling his story.

The National Post, founded by convicted Canadian fraudster, Lord Conrad Black recently published this story about Porter, one a confidant of Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.
MORE THAN A YEAR after being jailed in La Joya — Panama’s most notorious prison — alleged hospital fraudster Arthur Porter is now sharing with the public the squalid and violent details of his life in Cellblock 6.
Those details include being pepper-sprayed by prison guards during a raid on Aug. 8, says his lawyer, losing consciousness “for five to 10 minutes,” and coming to the aid of a bloodied and dying fellow inmate nine days later.
Most significantly, the man who once enjoyed wearing his trademark bow tie as he hobnobbed with Canada’s political elite, has also released a photo taken of him in prison, showing Porter bare-chested and in grey shorts.
And in a bizarre twist, Ricardo Bilonick, Porter’s attorney, claimed in an interview withPostmedia News that Robert Kennedy III tried unsuccessfully to interview Porter in prison in June.
Amid all the prison drama, Canadian authorities have tried unsuccessfully to freeze Porter’s financial assets as he fights extradition to Quebec to face criminal charges.
“I received a note about freezing of some assets, but he doesn’t have the assets that they think he has,” Bilonick said in a phone interview from Panama City.
“I presume they’ve been unsuccessful, but then again, I don’t think he stole the money.”
Porter, the former executive director of the McGill University Health Centre, is alleged to be the ringleader of an eight-person conspiracy to defraud the hospital network of $22.5 million arising from the awarding of the $1.3-billion superhospital construction contract.
In a posting on his own blog — managed by his daughters — Porter addresses the attempt to put a freeze on his bank accounts in Canada and the Caribbean, where he maintains properties in the Bahamas.

“Without a trial or judgment of any kind, Quebec has tried to seize my assets accumulated over 30 years of being a successful doctor and businessman,” Porter said. “Fortunately, all of the jurisdictions involved still believe in the presumption of innocence prior to a trial and conviction, which does not seem to be the current Canadian way.”
Meanwhile, Porter — who says he’s suffering from Stage IV lung cancer that has spread to his liver, abdomen and bones — is recovering from injuries that his lawyer contends he sustained during a raid in La Joya three weeks ago.
The purpose of the raid was to seize smartphones and laptop computers, which are forbidden for inmates.
In the early morning hours of Aug. 8, guards fired tear gas canisters in Cellblock 6 of La Joya where Porter is incarcerated and stormed a number of prison cells, including Porter’s, Bilonick said.
Porter was lying on his bed, hooked up to an oxygen tank to help him breathe, Bilonick recounted, when the guards entered his cell.
“Without any warning, they sprayed his face with pepper spray and pulled him out of his bed,” Bilonck said. “They brought him down the stairs, where he suffered some bruises on his hands and his legs. And apparently, he lost consciousness for a while. They didn’t take him to the hospital.”
The following day, Bilonick added, he visited Porter in prison and saw all his bruises as well as a bandage on his right arm.
In another blog posting, Porter recalled coming to the aid of a fellow prisoner on Aug. 17 who “fell off his makeshift bed, slamming his head against the concrete floor.”
Blood was oozing from the man’s head, and Porter said that he was summoned to examine him, since prisoners in La Joya know he is a physician by training. Porter observed that the man’s clavicle was broken.
The next day, however, the man “started having grand mal epileptic seizures indicating an intracerebral bleed” and he died on Aug. 18, Porter wrote on his blog.
What’s significant about this account is that Porter chose to post on his website a photo of him tending to the man. The picture shows Porter with a stethoscope around his neck, his left hand comforting the man on the floor. The photo also shows that Porter has lost little or no weight despite a diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer more than 17 months ago.
When asked if Porter’s case was his most unusual, Bilonick replied that Robert Kennedy III posed him the same question. He explained that Kennedy — who once directed a musical in Manhattan’s Lower East Side — tried in vain to meet Porter in prison. Instead, Bilonick said, Kennedy interviewed him about Porter. Postmedia News has been unable to reach Kennedy through his Twitter account to verify Bilonick’s statement.

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