Updated 11.40am with Ciantar's statement

Police have formally informed Carmen Ciantar, head of the Foundation for Medical Services, that they have concluded exhaustive investigations into bribery allegations and there were “no grounds for any criminal action" against her.

Ciantar had suspended herself from her job when a Pakistani newspaper claimed she was the beneficiary of a bribe by people behind Vitals Healthcare when the company was negotiating the hospitals' deal with the government.

Ciantar denied the claims, also pointing out that she was not employed by the foundation at the time. When she testified in a magisterial inquiry concerning the hospital privatisation deal and urged police to investigate the corruption claims. 

In an interview with Times of Malta, Ciantar, who is a close political aide to Chris Fearne, had claimed she was “collateral damage” in a “dirty campaign to try to discredit the deputy prime minister".

In July she returned to her post as CEO of the foundation saying the truth and her integrity had won over the £massive and moneyed dark forces which tried to annihilate both".

Four months since the story first emerged, police have now put to rest the allegations.

In a letter dated September 7, Superintendent James Grech from the Financial Crimes Investigations Department informed Ciantar that the matter was “exhaustively and thoroughly investigated”.

Referring to media reports about “suspicious transactions amounting to €443,500 from Gozo International Medicare Ltd, part of Vitals Global Healthcare back in 2015 and 2016,” the police had found “no grounds for any criminal action to be taken”. 

Investigations into those allegations in her regard were thus declared “closed”. 

Lawyer Vincent Micallef assisted Ciantar. 

'A frame-up from beginning to end': Ciantar

In a statement late on Friday morning, Ciantar repeated that the allegations were "a frame-up from beginning to end".

"Now that the truth has come out, now that the institutions have worked, only one thing remains to be unearthed. Who were the well-funded dark forces who tried to execute this nefarious frame-up," she asked.

Ciantar thanked all those who stood by her during the "horrible ordeal".

"More broadly, it was of great comfort that no one I met, absolutely no one, needed the police to know the truth," she added.