Arthur Porter, ex-McGill hospital director, to be extradited from Panama

Panama and Canada have reached an agreement for the extradition of former McGill University Health Centre director Arthur Porter, according to Radio-Canada.

SRC has confirmed from a source that a deal was reached but no date has been set for him to be sent back to Canada. He has been in a Panamanian jail since May 2013 when he was arrested at the Panama airport on an international warrant.Porter is being extradited to Canada to face the corruption charges against him.

Porter can still challenge the extradition order.

Porter's family told CBC on Saturday that they had spoken with Arthur and he saysthe report on his extradition is untrue.

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Porters wife, Pamela, did not fight her extradition and has since pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering.

A shell company in her name was used to purchase eight homes, several bought for more than $1 million.

Arthur Porter has repeatedly denied that he received kickbacks for awarding anSNC-Lavalin consortium a $1.3-billion contract to build a super-hospital at McGill.

He has said that $22.5 million in payments from SNC-Lavalin was his reward for years of international consulting work.

Porter saidhe began discussions about future work withSNC-Lavalinas far back as 2005, which would be shortly after he was appointed CEO of the McGill University Health Centre.

In an interview with CBC News last September, he called it a "loose agreement"with the Montreal-based engineering giant.

"We were not actually conducting business,"said Porter. "We never actually started anything.We passed some letters."

SNC-Lavalin issued a statement to CBC Newsthat we do not have any information that supports the claims Mr. Porter has made regarding SNC-Lavalin and a contract in 2005.

"If there was a contract, we would be interested to see it and begin an internal investigation on the subject."