The Director General of Public Contracts should reconsider his position following the recent Vitals court judgment, PN MEP candidate Peter Agius said in an open letter published on Thursday.
Agius has accused the director general of contracts Anthony Cachia of failing to act after a damning report in 2020 by the Auditor General found the government to have engaged in “collusive behaviour” in its deal with Vitals Global Healthcare.
“[Cachia] was duty bound to prevent fraud in Vitals’ contract. Instead, he towed [the] government line for three years after the Auditor General’s findings… costing the taxpayer an additional €130 million,” he wrote in a letter published on Thursday.
“The director’s responsibility should have kicked in already in July 2020 after the damning Auditor General report,” Agius wrote.
The report highlighted the illustrated technical and legal breaches of public procurement law and procedure, he continued, saying that instead of acting, Cachia had “waited for instructions from above”.
Published in 2020, the 19-page report from the auditors’ office characterised the concession deal as “pre-determined”, highlighting what it called “serious shortcomings” by the bid evaluation team and a “grossly inadequate” due diligence process.
No action was taken against the company by the contracts department following the report, while Steward continued to administer St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo General Hospitals. This arrangement is set to be discontinued following the conclusion of a court case brought against the company by former PN leader Adrian Delia.
“The recent Vitals court judgement obliges the Director of Contracts to reconsider his position,” Agius wrote, in reference to last month’s judgment which saw a court rule that three privatised hospitals should be returned to the public.
In his letter on Thursday, Agius stressed that he made the director general aware of “the continued violation of public procurement laws” in a separate letter sent last June co-signed by PN MP Darren Carabott.
That letter had gone unanswered, Agius said.
The “distortion” of public procurement rules was done with the complicity of the director general’s office, Agius wrote on Thursday.
"They are there to protect the public interest, not the powers that be on the day, especially if those come with fraudulent objectives,” he wrote.
Cachia has served at the contracts department for almost 20 years, having been made “responsible for all public procurement policy” as Director of Contracts in 2004, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was made director general in 2013.