The St James private hospital group was sucked into the latest WikiLeaks headlines yesterday after claims emerged that Muammar Gaddafi’s daughter had a financial interest in the group’s Tripoli hospital.

“Aisha (Gaddafi) is also reported to have financial interests in the private St James Clinic of Tripoli,” a liaison officer said in a confidential cable sent in May 2006 from the US Embassy in Tripoli.

The Maltese medical group’s denial was swift, however. When contacted, St James Hospital chairman Josie Muscat said: “We are the sole investors in Libya. It would be interesting to know from where the correspondent got his information.”

In the cable, the liaison officer describes St James hospital in Tripoli as “one of the two most trustworthy medical facilities that supplement the unreliable health care available through public facilities” and points out that on top of health care management and “referrals to hospitals to Malta and elsewhere in Europe, the clinic has an extensive aesthetic surgery practice”.

The cable, titled Qadhafi Incorporated, deals with the reported wide-ranging business interests of the Gaddafi family and delves into some of the stakes the Libyan leader’s children are reported to have.

About the Libyan leader’s daughter, a lawyer in her early 30s, the liaison officer comments she moved from a focus on charitable and human rights activities – she heads different charities and, in 2004, she famously joined Saddam Hussein’s defence team – to branch out into various business ventures. It is here the cable claims she also has interest in the St James’ operations in Libya.