Grech convenes Valletta protest over damning NAO report into Vitals-Steward deal

The Nationalist Party will bring out supporters and demonstrators outside the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening, to protest the government’s record on the mishandling of the Vitals-Steward hospitals privatisation deal.

Opposition leader Bernard Grech said it was calling on the public to show its condemnation of the Labour administration, in the face of the third NAO report on the privatisation deal.

The Opposition filibustered its way into the parliamentary debate of Tuesday which had been reserved for the budgetary subvention to the Housing Authority, with a sustained attack on the Steward-Vitals hospitals privatisation deal.

Bolstered by a damning Auditor General’s report that sealed a treble on the condemnation of the Muscat administration’s deal to transfer three State hospitals to a private consortium, the PN led the attack with MPs Karol Aquilina, Darren Carabott and leader Bernard Grech.

“When the House was discussing the court’s rescission of the deal, I said without hesitation that Labour were the fraudsters in this case... today I can they are the biggest of all fraudsters, as the NAO report confirms, without any doubt, that this fraud was committed by Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela in full complicity of Labour MPs who supported what is the biggest scandal in our country’s history.”

Aquilina listed various black marks from the NAO report, such as waivers granted to Steward early in 2020, overpaying the concessionaires by €49 million in 2020 when Steward made a profit of €6 million, according in 2021 another €25 million over and above their budgetary allocation, and that the NAO found that between 2016-2021, the government paid Steward €268 million which were not salaries.

“What does this mean? It means that from 2016 onwards, government paid them over €410 million... under Muscat they received €128m, which does not include wages paid separately by the government, and another €280 million, not wages, under the Abela administration.

“So those who are to blame for this scandal are Muscat and Abela: political responsibility must be carried and justice be done.”

MP Darren Carabott accused the government and Labour MPs of having been deliberately inactive before the accusations constantly lobbied at the Vitals-Steward deal.

“In 2016, the UHM asked for an investigation in the PAC, in 2018 the Opposition wrote to the NAO, in 2020 Adrian Delia filed his case, and Labour did nothing... when the NAO reports were published, you did nothing.

Carabott lampooned former minister Konrad Mizzi, who stewarded the privatisation deal, as “the man who claimed to have found God but always made sure to put his money before faith,” condemning his refusal to testify before the NAO.

“Robert Abela cannot blame these sins on his predecessors, because his administration approved every budgetary subvention to Steward year after year. The real victim here is the Maltese work who earns his money, not feeds at the trough...

“The government can still salvage the situation... yet Abela is compromised by his personal oath to Muscat. Government MPs have the choice to show loyalty and good faith to the court decision and the NAO report by joining the Opposition.”

On his part Bernard Grech accused the Labour bench of supporting “corrupt contracts” – save for former MPs Marlene and Godfrey Farrugia – and described the court rescission of the deal as a rare occasion that served as a damning indictment of the government and its questionable deals. He accused Muscat and Abela of using both internal and external influence to obstruct justice by preventing the court verdict from being enforced.

“They went to great lengths to use public funds to prevent the Court from reaching the intended verdict,” he said, accusing the government of hypocrisy in first mocking any evidence to substantiate allegations on the Steward deal, and now enthusiastically chasing the concessionaires out. “They were caught out and now they are saying ‘it’s not me!’.”

For the government side, justice minister Jonathan Attard, deputy PM Chris Fearne and whip Andy Ellul propped up the administration’s defence.

Attard said the government had obtained a win at the arbitration tribunal against Steward and had immediately countered the appeal filed by Steward in the Maltese courts, apart from having taking over hospital operations.

He said the Opposition should not prejudice government’s legal position, but respect its strong legal argument. “We will fight those who try to tarnish our country’s reputation... it is a total spin that the NAO report quantifies some ‘fraud’ as being ‘bigger’, this is not stated anywhere in the report.”

Deputy PM and health minister Chris Fearne also put up a strong show to defend his role and that of the Cabinet as being kept in the dark by the actions of Konrad Mizzi in negotiating the €100 million default for Steward. “I may have been kept in the dark in the past on this deal... but now it is my ministry that is leading the salvage operation on this.”

Fearne said the government had taken immediate action in the wake of the court decision on the rescission of the deal; and also defended the immediate steps taken in 2020 to start steering discussions towards rebalancing the concession as well as for any termination of the deal. “That was the first time that I personally, and the prime minister, learnt of the €100 million court default... and it got us stuck in the mud, because we could not terminate the deal. Thanks in part to the case filed by Adrian Delia... from 5 April, the hospitals started being State-run.”

Additional reporting by Marianna Calleja