Grech: Gafà refusing to carry out independent criminal investigation into Vitals collusion

Opposition leader Bernard Grech has accused Commissioner of Police Angelo Gafà of refusing to carry out an independent criminal investigation into the alleged fraudulence of a privatisation deal signed between the Muscat administration and Vitals Global Healthcare, later Steward.

Grech said the Commissioner of Police should have long started his own criminal investigation into the fraud that occurred on the Steward hospitals case, as evidenced by a first court sentence and now the Appeals Court sentence on the hospitals contract - roundly deemed to have been fraudulently constructed through a collusion of unknown government and private parties.

“He simply does not want to investigate it,” Grech said of Gafà on RTK with host Andrew Azzopardi. “He told me there was no other police investigation independent of the magisterial inquiry,” Grech said, meaning that the police’s criminal investigation is assisting the Gabriella Vella magisterial inquiry.

“Gafà needs nobody’s authority or initiative to hold a criminal investigation independent of other outcomes… the police should have endeavoured to preserve any scene of the crime, or evidence, even stopped the continued bleeding of the government’s proceeds towards Steward in managing the hospitals.”

Grech accused prime minister Robert Abela of betraying his purported claim that he respected the Maltese judiciary and court system, after alleging in the House that the Nationalist Party “was playing home” inside the courts.

Abela was referring to various reports filed by PN representatives or civil society allies to the court magistrates, which have snowballed into magisterial inquiries with potentially criminal liability for former members of the past Labour administrations.

“The Chief Justice and his judges have carried out their work in full respect of the Constitution and have amply shown they will not bow down to the whims of Robert Abela,” Grech said.

Minimum wage

While welcoming the minimum wage increase deal clinched by the government and social partners, Grech said he was concerned that wage increases could lead to a wage-price inflation spiral, where businesses affected by higher labour costs pass on the added burden to consumer prices.

“I am not sure that the government has truly understood how to address the inflation concerns faced by people,” Grech said.

Grech said he was partial towards tax credits as well as the removal of taxation on the Cost of Living Allowance, pointing out that labour cost increases hurt the private sector most. “People should know that it is employers who are obliged to raise wages by the government COLA mechanism… the burden is on employers, while the government then taxes that increased portion.”