Robert Aquilina claims police chief blocked interrogations, plea deals in Vitals inquiry

Robert Aquilina, the former president of anti-corruption NGO Repubblika, has accused Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa of obstructing a criminal investigation into the Vitals hospital contracts scandal by ensuring that none of the individuals named by an inquiring magistrate were ever interrogated by police.

In a Facebook post published on Monday morning, Aquilina revealed that he recently gave a voluntary, audio-visually recorded statement to the criminal investigations department. While stating that he is keeping most of the statement’s content confidential for now, he said he explained how Gafa allegedly worked to "undermine the criminal inquiry" into possible fraud and corruption in the hospital concession deals.

Aquilina said the commissioner acted “to avoid at all costs that any of the indicted individuals might crack under the pressure of interrogation,” citing the example of Melvyn Theuma, the middleman in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case who turned state witness and exposed key figures. Aquilina suggested that the authorities feared a similar situation could unfold if those implicated in the Vitals case were pressed during questioning.

He also claimed Gafa failed to deploy legal tools that could have strengthened the case, particularly by not offering plea bargains or conditional pardons to encourage insiders to testify against co-conspirators. “I explained that Gafa undermined that inquiry and the resulting prosecutions by not using a powerful and effective legal tool... that is, offering a plea bargain or pardon,” Aquilina wrote.

The former Repubblika president concluded by expressing pessimism about immediate action being taken, blaming what he called a “bullying” culture within the police force under Gafa’s leadership. Nonetheless, he voiced hope that the Commissioner would eventually face an inquiry into his conduct.

“I urge the officers of the force to always choose what is right over Commissioner Gafa,” Aquilina wrote. “In due time, everything will come to light.”

The Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH) case concerns a public-private partnership agreement signed in 2015, under which the management of three state hospitals was handed to VGH. The company, which had no prior healthcare experience, eventually sold the concession to Steward Health Care in 2018. A magisterial inquiry concluded that the deal was fraudulent from the outset.

In May 2024, charges were filed against several high-profile individuals, including former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, ex-Minister Konrad Mizzi, and former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri. They face charges including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit an offence.