So, this newspaper approached Robert Abela to ask for his reply to Steward Health Care’s damning statements about his government and its predecessor. And Abela dealt with it by gaslighting the press. He couldn’t understand, he said, why the press was changing its interpretation of the hospitals’ concession.

As it happens, the press hasn’t changed its interpretation. Daphne Caruana Galizia warned of the stench surrounding the 2015 three-hospital concession to Vitals Global Healthcare, to hidden investors, from before the deal was signed. Over the years, as independent media organisations followed up on her revelations, the stench has only grown stronger.

Even if the press reinterpreted the deal, so what? As new information comes in, one can change one’s mind. And the op-ed signed by Nadine Delicata, Steward’s president in Malta, gave plenty to think about.

She claims that it was the government that approached Steward to take over the concession from Vitals. The government had given the impression that it was originally a bystander.

She describes the concession as a fiasco from design to execution, with gross negligence by the authorities in monitoring what Vitals was doing. There were no funds left for staff salaries. No management accounts were even kept.

She says that Steward accepted to take over the deal, at two weeks’ notice, on the understanding that the original deal would be renegotiated to make the concession viable. The original concession is so “unfit for purpose” that it’s worthless: no bank will lend Steward money so it can fulfil its obligations to invest €220 million.

Such details raise grave questions. Where does the unbankable deal leave Vitals? Its investors must have known the banks wouldn’t give them the money to fulfil their obligations. Did they never intend to invest €220 million?

They certainly behaved that way. They kept no management accounts. Delicata writes they set up a raft of companies, shifted assets and burned through funds – another way of saying we’re looking at a scam.

The deal with Vitals was kept secret because of “commercial sensitivity”. Now, we’re told by the company that bought it (for €1) that it’s worthless. Is that what was deemed “sensitive”?

A scam is how Caruana Galizia described it. That suspicion was reinforced by the evidence gathered by journalists on the shadowy investors behind Vitals, not to mention what was easily found about their frontman, Ram Tumuluri.

Investigative reporting also suggested the scam needed help from inside government at very senior levels. The auditor general then reported that the deal was vitiated by collusive behaviour and should have been barred; he also found 60 instances of breach of service obligations – yet, no action was ever taken by the authorities.

In case you doubted the media and the auditor general, Steward has just confirmed what they said. It has also filed documents in court claiming the original deal was corrupt.

In case you doubted the media and the auditor general, Steward has just confirmed what they said- Ranier Fsadni

Delicata has also confirmed what Albert Fenech, the late cardiologist, told The Shift News a week before he died. He began by believing in the Vitals project and worked for it. He concluded, based on his inside knowledge, that it was a scam.

No, prime minister, there’s plenty in what Delicata wrote to make it clear why anyone would change their “interpretation” of the deal with Steward – if at this stage they still entertained doubts.

But what the press thinks isn’t the issue. It’s what the government thinks that matters. If anyone has been changing interpretations, it’s been the government.

Four years ago, the minister in charge of signing the deal, Konrad Mizzi, tweeted: “We look forward to shaping a best in class patient centric model for health public private partnerships.”

Joseph Muscat, then prime minister, stated: “Our resolve to upgrade Malta and Gozo’s healthcare services to world-class levels has been given a further boost through this partnership.”

It wouldn’t have been difficult to upgrade a partnership that left no money for staff salaries. According to Fenech, in Gozo, the facility he set up was down to the last week of supplies in the laboratory.

But a boost? Through a partnership that Steward itself now denounces as impossible without a substantial renegotiation? Still, Chris Fearne, the health minister, described the agreement with Steward as “the real deal”.

Abela himself said he saw good things and things he didn’t like in the deal. In parliament, in April 2020, he declared that the outstanding issues with Steward would have been settled had it not been for COVID. Yet, they’re not. In fact, Steward has taken to the courts.

Delicata says that the government backed out of finalised negotiations three times – always at the last minute. Had Abela changed his “interpretation”? Can he help us understand why?

What about the cabinet meeting which decided that Steward would be awarded no more extended deadlines? Two years on, those deadlines seem to have been extended, after all. Another change of interpretation?

Fearne told the press he wouldn’t enter into a skirmish with Steward in public. No one asked him to. He’s being asked to explain himself to us. It’s a €4 billion deal, the government is shovelling millions of taxpayers’ money to Steward, what the government told us is being contradicted, and we’re owed an explanation.