Steward Health Care’s CEO gained’t be at a congressional listening to subsequent week regardless of being subpoenaed, as his legal professional says his testimony could be “wholly inappropriate” amid chapter proceedings.
Alexander J. Merton, an legal professional representing Dr. Ralph de la Torre, has requested the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Training, Labor and Pensions to postpone his consumer’s testimony and to reschedule the Sept. 12 listening to till after the proceedings.
Merton’s calls got here in a letter to Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-VT, the chairman of the HELP Committee, on Wednesday, hours earlier than a federal chapter court docket decide accredited Steward’s plan to promote its six Massachusetts hospitals.
Regardless of the plan receiving the inexperienced gentle, Decide Christopher Lopez determined to maintain the situations of the closings within the works. The focused time limit is Sept. 30.
In his letter, Merton highlighted how Steward determined final week to ban de la Torre from talking on the corporate’s behalf concerning any “bankruptcy-related issues.”
That’s as a result of “those matters had already been delegated exclusively to an independent sub-committee of Steward’s board of managers established” final December, Merton wrote.
“As Steward’s missive explains,” he wrote, “Dr. de la Torre is prohibited from testifying about anything within the (committee’s) purview, including ‘topics related to the Company’s debt obligations, potential claims or causes of action, chapter 11 sale transactions, chapter 11 financing transactions, and/or similar transactions and related matters.’ ”
The HELP Committee voted in July to launch a Congressional investigation into what led Steward to file for chapter protections this previous Might and to subpoena on-the-record testimony from de la Torre, who they are saying is in the end answerable for the corporate’s failure and answerable to its sufferers.
The committee deliberate to ask de la Torre to clarify how he and his fellow executives had been in a position to stroll about with tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} — which lawmakers have argued was used to purchase luxurious boats, non-public jets, and posh Texas mansions — solely to have their attorneys search chapter safety from over $9 billion in money owed.
Massachusetts’ U.S. Sens. Ed Markey, the chairman of the subcommittee holding the listening to, and Elizabeth Warren, blasted de la Torre’s “defiance of a subpoena to appear before the Senate,” which they referred to as “outrageous.”
“He got rich as private equity and real estate vultures picked apart, and drove into bankruptcy, hospitals that employed thousands of health care workers who served communities in Massachusetts and across the country,” Markey and Warren wrote in a joint assertion. “De la Torre used hospitals as his personal piggy bank and lived in luxury while gutting Steward hospitals.”
Markey and Warren beforehand invited de la Torre to supply voluntary testimony at a senate committee area listening to held in Boston on April 3, greater than a month earlier than the corporate advised a Texas chapter decide they would want to promote their hospital techniques at public sale as a part of Chapter 11 proceedings.
De la Torre didn’t seem for the listening to.
“Unfortunately, while Dr. de la Torre has continued to fight for Steward hospitals and the patients and communities they serve,” Merton wrote in his letter to Sanders, “members of this Committee continue to cast aspersions on Dr. de la Torre and appear determined to turn the hearing into a pseudo-criminal proceeding in which they use the time, not to gather facts, but to convict Dr. de la Torre in the eyes of public opinion.”
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