The U.S. Senate referred the CEO of bankrupt Steward Health Care to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for criminal contempt charges, after he failed to answer a congressional subpoena seeking his in-person testimony.

The contempt resolution was approved by the unanimous consent of the full Senate after Dr. Ralph de la Torre declined to appear before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee when subpoenaed to explain how he became extraordinarily wealthy while his hospital systems went belly up.

“Over the past decade, Steward, led by its founder and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre, and its corporate enablers, looted hospitals across the country for profit, and got rich through their greedy schemes,” Sen. Ed Markey said in a statement after the vote.

De la Torre’s attorneys told the Herald the contempt vote represented an attempt to use a “mechanism typical for uncontested situations” to violate de la Torre’s constitutional rights, including his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

“The HELP Committee has weaponized Congress’s civil and criminal contempt procedures to punish Dr. de la Torre, and obtain his testimony by compulsion, simply because Dr. de la Torre invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in response to a subpoena from the Committee commanding his testimony in a pseudo-criminal proceeding in which members of the Committee solicited testimony from witnesses calling Dr. de la Torre a ‘health care terrorist’ and advocating for his imprisonment,” they said in a statement.

Steward declared bankruptcy in May, after it became apparent the company would not be able to manage its debt obligations and simultaneously maintain its hospitals. Through its bankruptcy attorneys, the company said it would sell off its hospital system, including several in Massachusetts.

Not every hospital was sold through that process, however, and two — Carney Hospital, in Dorchester, and Nashoba Valley Medical Center, in Ayer — closed this summer.

According to Markey, de la Torre is the root of the problem.

“Hospital systems collapsed, workers struggled to provide care, and patients suffered and died. Dr. de la Torre and his corporate cronies abdicated their responsibility to these communities that they had promised to serve,” Markey said.

As the hospitals spiraled into bankruptcy,  de la Torre grew rich, Markey said, buying “fancy cars and private planes and becoming the posterchild of callous corporate greed.”

Ahead of the unanimous consent vote by the Senate this week and contempt resolution from the  (HELP) Committee last week, Markey said, several attempts were made to speak with Steward’s CEO, including under order of a subpoena.

“Time and time again, he has refused and hid behind excuses,” Markey said.