The attorney for former MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros released a letter Wednesday from the Ohio Ethics Commission, which determined there was "insufficient evidence" to support any ethics violations in the bonuses he awarded himself prior to his firing in 2022.
The decision was reached weeks after the Ohio Auditor of State found there was no evidence Boutros broke the law, either.
MetroHealth fired Boutros a month before he was set to retire. The Board of Trustees said they discovered he’d awarded himself up to $2 million in unauthorized bonuses.
Boutros requested the Ethics Commission review his actions following his firing. The Ohio Ethics Commission enforces ethics laws in government operations.
A letter from the commission to one of Boutros’ attorneys states the board came to its conclusion after reviewing the facts during its regular December 17, 2024 meeting.
"The Ohio Auditor of State and the Ohio Ethics Commissions’ Investigations and conclusions have now fully exposed the Board’s false accusations," Boutros' attorney Jason Bristol said in a written statement. "Taken together, the findings of the Ohio Auditor of State, the Ohio Ethics Commission, and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, all make clear that the MetroHealth Board falsely accused Dr. Boutros of wrongdoing."
When reached for comment, a MetroHealth spokesperson said the system only recently learned of the correspondence between Dr. Boutros and the Ohio Ethics Commission and does not have a full picture of what evidence the Ohio Ethics Commission considered and what laws or violations the Ohio Ethics Commission evaluated.
"Our focus is on responding to Dr. Boutros’s claims made against MetroHealth through our filings in court, which we are doing," the statement read.
