The RCMP searched the office of an accounting firm whose owner was appointed to the board of a government agency by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith – one of multiple search warrants executed by police as part of their investigation into the province’s health care procurement controversy.
Thursday marked the third day of RCMP searches at a number of locations in Edmonton.
A marked RCMP vehicle was parked in front of Jaberson & Associates, a tax preparation and accounting firm owned by Sam Jaber. In November, 2023, Ms. Smith appointed him to the board of Invest Alberta, which focuses on attracting capital investment to the province.
Mr. Jaber has also served as the chief financial officer of MHCare Medical Corp., a private company owned by Sam Mraiche, a businessman at the centre of the province’s procurement controversy.
Speaking with a Globe and Mail reporter outside Jaberson & Associates on Thursday, RCMP Constable Mark McTaggart, one of the Mounties involved in the search, said the police were there as part of a continuing investigation.
The Globe sent questions about the search to Mr. Jaber and a lawyer who has previously acted for him. In response, a different lawyer acting for Mr. Jaber, Matthew Nathanson, sent a statement saying that his client is a law-abiding professional who has done nothing wrong.
“He has not been charged with any offence and steadfastly maintains his innocence,” Mr. Nathanson said in a statement. “Any accusation against him, should one be made, will be vigorously contested.”
The Globe on Wednesday evening first reported that RCMP were searching MHCare’s head office in Edmonton.
The RCMP launched an investigation into allegations of procurement irregularities one year ago, after Alberta Health Services’s former chief executive, Athana Mentzelopoulos, sued the Smith government for wrongful dismissal.
She alleged, among other things, that the government fired her for investigating potential conflicts of interest between procurement officials at Alberta Health Services and companies that were awarded contracts, including MHCare.
Ms. Smith’s government denies the allegations and says it terminated Ms. Mentzelopoulos’s employment because she was not executing the government’s agenda. None of the allegations have been tested in court. Mr. Mraiche and MHCare are not parties to the lawsuit.
Scott Hutchison, a lawyer for Mr. Mraiche, on Wednesday evening said in an e-mailed statement that his client and the company “have consistently maintained that they have not engaged in any improper conduct.”
“They remain confident that any fair and objective investigation will reach that conclusion,” he added.
Alberta Health Services has awarded Mr. Mraiche’s companies roughly $614-million worth of business since he started selling medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. This includes a 2022 deal, worth $70-million, for MHCare to import children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen during the North American shortage of those medications. Only a third of the medication landed in Alberta, a small amount was distributed, and the remainder was donated to other countries or destroyed.
Mr. Mraiche is also a part owner in a venture that hoped to build two new private surgical facilities in Alberta and had proposed contracts worth about $430-million.
The RCMP has declined to detail where else it has executed search warrants.
On Thursday, a Globe reporter spoke with a neighbour of Jitendra Prasad, one of the former Alberta Health Service procurement officials who was part of Ms. Mentzelopoulos’s probe.
The neighbour told The Globe that RCMP officers had attended at Mr. Prasad’s home throughout the day on Tuesday.
Mr. Prasad spearheaded the children’s medication deal for Alberta Health Services in late 2022. Ms. Mentzelopoulos’s internal probe discovered that Mr. Prasad had an MHCare e-mail address in the fall of 2022, when he was also leading procurement at Alberta Health Services.
Months prior, during a period of time when he briefly left the public sector to work as a consultant, he joined Mr. Mraiche for a meeting with Ms. Smith, who was then running for the leadership of the United Conservative Party, according to a copy of Ms. Smith’s calendar, which was obtained by The Globe.
A lawyer for Mr. Prasad did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Jaber owns two tax and accounting businesses, corporate records show – Jaberson & Associates and Tax Pros, both based in Edmonton.
Corporate filings show that Mr. Jaber and his accounting businesses have acted as registering agents for several of Mr. Mraiche’s business ventures.
Mr. Jaber was appointed to Invest Alberta’s board at the behest of the Premier’s Office, according to records obtained by The Globe through an access to information request.
In a series of e-mails, government staff discuss Mr. Jaber’s potential appointment. In an e-mail dated Oct. 26, 2023, one official wrote that the Premier’s Office “has indicated this is a priority for immediate action.” Mr. Jaber was appointed to the board by an order-in-council signed by the Premier four weeks later. His term is set to expire next January.
Invest Alberta declined to comment.
The Premier in the summer of 2024 confirmed that Jaberson & Associates furnished her office with tickets to watch the Edmonton Oilers play the Vancouver Canucks in British Columbia during the NHL playoffs that year. Mr. Mraiche joined Ms. Smith in a box suite to watch the game, a photo taken by The Canadian Press shows.
Sam Blackett, Ms. Smith’s spokesman, did not return a message seeking comment.
Ms. Smith, speaking in the legislature Thursday about the MHCare search, said she would not comment on what she called “policing matters.”
However, she pointed to a report prepared by Raymond Wyant, a retired judge from Manitoba whom she appointed to investigate the procurement policies at Alberta Health Services and the provincial Health Ministry regarding chartered surgical facilities and the deal to import children’s painkillers.
“We received a report from judge Raymond Wyant, which clearly found that no politician, no political staff and no government of Alberta official had any wrongdoing in this matter,” she said during Question Period.
Mr. Wyant’s conclusions about politicians and their staff came with caveats.
“When I find that there was no wrongful interference by any government official in the matters concerning this report, that only means that I found no evidence of such, but I am not in a position to make a final and absolute determination,” he stated in his report, published last October.
With reports from Alanna Smith