No matter what is said, Steward is a mistake that should have never happened

When on Monday, the arbitration conclusions were announced there was a sigh of relief in the corridors of Castille. The narrative was rather simple; the government would have to pay no more monies to Steward Health Care and definitely not the €100 million etched secretly into the contract in August 2019.

Then there were all sort of declarations giving the impression that this was a great victory. It was like a patient with two legs missing rejoicing that his hands and arms would not be amputated after all.

The frustration was evident on the other side of the border. Adrian Delia made a fool of himself in parliament; angry that the arbitration decision had been turned into a victory by the government.

Beyond the Panama Papers scandal and the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Vitals and Steward contract will remain one of the darkest episodes for the Labour government. It was masterminded by Keith Schembri with the full connivance of Joseph Muscat. It was an uncalled-for project.  There was no added value apart for the con men who brought the idea to Muscat and Schembri under the guise of a company called Vitals and after that the aggressive and greedy Steward, owned by Ralph De La Torre.

The arbitration ruling was finally presented to the press on Friday afternoon. Why it took five days to give a copy to the press beats me. Those who have the patience to read through it will realise that the impression given by government is not as rosy as it appears.

It must be remembered that while government was declaring victory it tried to hide the fact that it wanted its money back from Steward and the tribunal refused the government’s claim.

Article 935 states: “…there exists no compelling evidence that deductions from the payments for Claimants’ healthcare services are warranted.”

The government boasts that every cent it paid to Steward was justified and the tribunal attests to this. But what the government does not say is that monies passed on to Steward were once again diverted to companies which had had their eyes on the hospitals contract. Some of these companies had the involvement of people close to Keith Schembri, Muscat’s chief of staff.

In Article 934 of the ruling, the tribunal stated: “The Tribunal is not convinced that the healthcare services provided by the Claimants were substantially lacking from a quantitative or quality perspective. The Claimants rightly point out that during the lifetime of the Transaction Agreements, the GoM never claimed any deduction on the HSDA invoices.”

This confirms that the government gave Steward a free hand until that one piece of information was revealed by MaltaToday.

That information showed that a side agreement had been signed between Konrad Mizzi and Steward in August 2019 that stated if the contract was terminated by the Maltese courts, Steward would be paid €100 million. Konrad Mizzi’s actions were well known to Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri. The ministers in Cabinet at the time argue they did not know about this secret agreement.

After the Delia court procedures and the media uproar, the new Labour administration under Robert Abela in 2020 first decided to renegotiate the Steward agreement but was later constrained to terminate it after the court ruling. Today, Steward is a derided company facing bankruptcy and Ralph de La Torre is accused of being greedy and acting in bad faith in the US.

But back to Malta.

When Vitals landed in Malta everything was done to give the impression that the private public partnership was a jump into excellence. Many were silent. Some medical professionals ended up with roles at Vitals and even one Nationalist MP, Albert Fenech, a cardiac surgeon, was appointed to a prominent role within the company. The media was constantly greased by the PR team. Few realised what a con this was until it finally emerged that the Vitals team was one big fraud and unable to deliver on its commitments.

To save the day and I guess their face, the Muscat team raced to find a replacement. The same CEO at Vitals, Armin Ernst, jumped ship and was crucial in bringing over Steward Health Care from the US. It was a name that had a medical legacy but one that camouflaged greed and contempt to propriety. And what was started by Vitals continued under Steward.

To be fair, then Health Minister Chris Fearne was kept out of the loop and Mizzi continued to be involved from a contractual side. Fearne was not trusted by the Muscat posse of yes men.

But it was only thanks to Adrian Delia, who institute a court case to rescind the contract, and the media that things started to change. Delia is now being blamed for being the reason the government can not make claims for refund. What cheek!

During all this a magisterial inquiry was launched and the findings published in 2024. In the chaos of data and information overload, some of which required more explanation, it was clear that the top decision makers in the Muscat administration wanted to enrich themselves off the hospitals contract.

But in the name of fairness something must be stated.

When in June last year, a regiment of people were dragged to court, without being interrogated and without supplementary investigation by the Attorney General and police, everyone smelt a rat.

I do not need to be speculative; I am simply repeating what I was told by many of those who ended up being criminally arraigned together with Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. “We were dragged into court to dilute the spotlight on Muscat; there was no due process in our regard, simply conjecture.”

When the arbitration result was published last week, Joseph Muscat rushed to declare some kind of victory. His words mean nothing. He will remain the architect of the Vitals and Steward failure. He knew exactly where it was going all along.

When he resigned from prime minister, which will be remembered as the fastest fall from grace in Maltese politics, Muscat would accompany Armin Ernst, the Stewards CEO, in a meeting at Castille. Not only did he have no regret with his deals with these crooks, but he was now advising them. Muscat’s hidden hand probably continued afterwards. In 2021, Armin Ernst declared that Steward wanted to purchase MaltaToday. The excuse being that they had an interest in the Maltese media landscape. The truth is that ‘someone’ had told them to buy MaltaToday in a bid to silence us.

The arbitration decision is welcome news for government since it means Malta has to pay nothing more to Steward apart from €5 million. But it does not change the fact that the Vitals and Steward contract was scandalous. The arbitration decision does not absolve the Labour Party from the shady behaviour of some of its top men in recent years.

The above is best described as something won at too great a cost to have been worthwhile for the victor. In other words, the ICC ruling was simply a pyrrhic victory of sorts. Definitely not something to be jubilant about.