As it struggled to pay vendors for needed medical supplies in the months before filing for bankruptcy, Steward Health Care paid nearly $1.6 million to a British private intelligence firm that it had used to surveil and dig up dirt on critics of the company.
Steward disclosed the payments and reams of other financial information in a new filing Wednesday in its bankruptcy case, which has left the future of its more than 30 hospitals, including eight in Massachusetts, in limbo. Bids are due Monday for Steward’s Massachusetts hospitals, which the company is trying to sell along with other properties in order to pay its creditors.
The robust payments Steward disclosed for surveillance came as the company was not paying some vendors and was running short of critical supplies for its hospitals. The documents show Steward made six payments to the British private-intelligence firm Audere International from February to April 2024, totaling nearly $1.6 million. One bill from February ran as high as $465,204.
Steward filed for bankruptcy May 6.
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A recent Globe Spotlight Team investigation revealed how Steward, for years, relied on Audere to surveil people viewed as problematic by the hospital chain’s executives, according to e-mails, encrypted messages, and financial records obtained by the global journalism outlet the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and shared with the Globe. In all, senior Steward executives authorized and spent over $7 million from 2018 to 2023 on firms that provide research, intelligence-gathering, and surveillance services, according to records reviewed by the Globe.
An employee of the surveillance firm last spring searched a former executive’s phone for compromising information, seizing on conversations with a sex worker and a cosmetic surgeon, records show.
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On another occasion, Audere enlisted a subcontractor to surveil a financial analyst who’d been critical of Steward’s relationship with Medical Properties Trust, according to internal correspondence reviewed by the Globe. A five-man team staked out his house for six days in March 2023, placing a tracker on his car and trailing him during trips to his 11-year-old daughter’s school, records show.

The internal correspondence reviewed by the Globe shows Steward’s general counsel, Herbert Holtz, oversaw payment to the intelligence firm. Holtz demanded that invoices from Audere be paid on time and in full, even as bills from medical vendors and staffing services piled up, records show. Audere’s work was part of a “spare no expenses mission” and ordered up specifically by Steward’s founder and chief executive, Ralph de la Torre, according to a January 2022 voicemail left by Holtz for the company’s financial officer, a recording of which was reviewed by the Globe.
Audere International couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, but a law firm for the company previously told the Globe that “our client takes its legal and regulatory compliance obligations seriously and acts in accordance with the same. Any suggestion to the contrary would be defamatory of our client.”
Steward declined to comment on the information about Audere in its latest filing.
The document filed early Wednesday in bankruptcy court also stated Steward Health Care paid de la Torre a gross salary of $4,175,863.36 in the year before the for-profit hospital system filed for bankruptcy.
Salaries of a dozen other top Steward executives also topped $1 million, according to the filing.
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However, a spokesperson for Steward said salaries listed in the document — including de la Torre’s — were inflated, and that corrected information would be refiled soon.
It was the first time Steward has disclosed salaries for executives and directors, which are typically not made public by for-profit, private health companies. The company, which moved its headquarters from Boston to Dallas in 2018, has for years also resisted requests by regulators to turn over financial data. Much of that information is now required to be listed for the benefit of creditors in a federal bankruptcy proceeding.
Wednesday’s filing also showed de la Torre received another $1.4 million in payments for benefits, insurance premiums, non-business flights, and expense and vendor reimbursements during the year that preceded Steward’s bankruptcy filing.
The filing didn’t list executive salaries and benefits for previous years. And it wasn’t clear from the filing if the amounts disclosed represented total compensation or if additional distributions were made to de la Torre and others who also are owners of the health care company.
De la Torre, a former cardiac surgeon initially hired to lead the Caritas Christi chain of Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts, engineered a 2010 sale of the system to New York private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The acquisition was approved by the Massachusetts attorney general and the Boston Archdiocese in exchange for funds used to upgrade the hospitals and fund nurses’ pensions.
With de la Torre at the helm, the rechristened Steward expanded its operations to eight states in a series of acquisitions. It sold the hospitals’ land and buildings in 2016 to a real estate investment trust. In 2021, after buying out Cerberus, the new Steward management group paid a roughly $111 million dividend to its stockowners. The majority of the payout went to de la Torre himself, the largest shareholder.
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Jessica Bartlett can be reached at jessica.bartlett@globe.com. Follow her @ByJessBartlett. Hanna Krueger can be reached at hanna.krueger@globe.com or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at hsk.13. Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com.