The Indelible Bonobo Experience

(In photo: Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith.) On Monday, Alberta’s opposition Wildrose Party released expense receipts from Edmonton Capital Health executive vice-president and chief executive officer Michele Lahey. Although the receipts do not show what was provided, they do reveal that Ms. Lahey spent more than US$5,000 on what appear to be medical services, and another $1,000 on an airport shuttle and meals. Her total reimbursement was for $7225.30. Although no flights were reimbursed, the documents show the executive spent time at a nearby hotel. (via Michele Lahey accused of spending taxpayer money on medical expenses … in the United States | Canadian Politics | Canada | News | National Post)

• “She stayed at a hotel near the Mayo clinic and expensed a significant amount of money. If this was a conference, one would assume she would have just labelled it a conference and produced documentation of the conference she attended… If it was a conference, why didn’t she make a claim for the flight between Edmonton and Minnesota?” said Wildrose MLA Kerry Towle.
• “Everything about it clearly states it’s not on the up and up, so there’s something backdoorish about it.”
• Liberal MLA Raj Sherman agreed: “On the credit statement it clearly said, ‘Thank you for choosing the Mayo Clinic, thank you for your payment … If you have any questions on insurance claims or payment, contact your insurance representative,’ ” Dr. Sherman said. “The last I checked, insurance companies don’t cover conference expenses.”
• Ordinary Albertans are required to have their out-of-province medical expenses approved by a different ministry, he added.
• The documents do not say what Ms. Lahey was treated for at the clinic.
• The expenses date to 2007, which is before the province’s health boards amalgamated into one superboard. Shortly afterward, in 2008, Ms. Lahey appears to have been appointed CEO to a hospital in the U.K. Wildrose said it would be pursuing Ms. Lahey for the funds.
• Ms. Towle said her party began requesting access to former health executives’ expense receipts after Allaudin Merali — a senior executive at Alberta Health Services who was also implicated in Ontario’s e-health spending debacle — left the organization last year. It was revealed he had expensed thousands of dollars on lavish meals, alcohol and repairs on his Mercedes Benz. The official who was in charge of overseeing Mr. Merali’s expenses, Sheila Weatherill, resigned when the scandal came to light.

Arkady Rotenberg, the boyhood friend and former judo partner of black-belt President Vladimir Putin, already is collecting his winnings from 2014’s Winter Olympics. Rotenberg’s companies have been awarded at least 227 billion rubles ($7.4 billion) worth of contracts for the Sochi Games, according to figures compiled from corporate and government filings. That’s more than the entire budget for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, though it represents just 15 percent of Russia’s latest estimate for the event, which promises to be the most expensive ever. (via Putin Friend Bags at Least 21 Russian Olympic Contracts - Businessweek)

• His contracts, which number at least 21, include a share of an $8.3 billion transport link between Sochi and ski resorts in the Caucasus Mountains, a $2.1 billion highway along the Black Sea, a $387 million media center, and a $133 million stretch of tarmac that will link various venues and double as Russia’s first Formula 1 track. “This is a monumental waste of public money,” says Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan who tracks Olympic spending. “A small number of people at the top have control of resources, and there’s no accountability.” Russia is the most corrupt of the Group of 20 economies, according to Berlin-based Transparency International.
• The bulk of Rotenberg’s Olympic contracts are held by Mostotrest, a Moscow-based company set up under Josef Stalin in 1930 to build bridges, according to its website. Rotenberg and partners, including his son Igor, gained control of Mostotrest in 2010, just before the company raised $388 million in an initial public offering. Rotenberg’s aide said he was unable to comment on his work on the Olympics. Officials at Mostotrest didn’t respond to requests for comment by e-mail and phone.
• Rotenberg told the Financial Times in November that while he values Putin’s friendship, he’d never abuse it for personal gain. “I have great respect for this person, and I consider that this is a person sent to our country from God,” said Rotenberg. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, says Rotenberg’s success is unrelated to his ties with Putin. “No friendship can grant you access to Olympics projects, which are very difficult to get because they’re hard to implement and aren’t as profitable as many other construction contracts,” Peskov says.