There is no way to do proper justice to the most extensive scam ever carried out on the country and its people.
The big money involved has gone into the pockets of the few at the expense of the many.
No one today doubts that the Labour Party was hijacked by a group of amoral opportunists and their foreign criminal accomplices.
They employed public relations experts and an army of social media trolls with the mission of attacking any journalist who dared to ask the right questions or seek the right answers.
They installed puppets and lackeys in every possible checks and balances institution they could.
They tested the water with the Café Premier and the Old Theatre Street property scams. As there was little public reaction, they then went after the big money.
Trips to Azerbaijan, the licensing of a pseudo-bank named Pilatus, sales of passports to Putin’s oligarchs and Saudi princes. It looked like a bag of new century opportunities being promoted by a pro-business establishment.
It then started to unravel. In early 2016, Daphne Caruana Galizia shocked the inner circle of this new mafia by exposing their secret dirty money offshore companies in Panama.
The shock hit hard because they feared that she knew more than she was letting on and that she would soon expose all the dirt on the Montenegro wind farm, the Noor Bank accounts in Dubai, the AUM side letters, and, naturally, the Vitals Global Healthcare mega-billion scam.
It also caused anguish with those who lamented that the original plan to assassinate her, which had involved three hitmen, had expired as no one, at that time, wanted to fork out the six-figure cash contract price.
Because she had spies everywhere. For crying out loud, she even had spies in German brothels.
Running Commentary had already exposed the suspicious tender process that cabinet ministers Chris Cardona and Konrad Mizzi were organising with international fraudsters Ram Tumuluri and Mark Pawley.
Yet, Joseph Muscat felt powerful enough to go ahead regardless. He had the utmost faith in his soldiers and in the ignorance of his electorate.
As Vitals ultimately failed to meet any of their contractual obligations in any of the three hospitals, despite receiving millions of euros in advance, Muscat, with advice from his legal counsel, simply kept paying out the public’s money and, with each instalment, he gave Tumuluri more extensions to play at doing nothing. Incidentally, for three years, Robert Abela did the same.
It then started to unravel. In early 2016, Daphne Caruana Galizia shocked the inner circle of this new mafia by exposing their secret dirty offshore companies in Panama- Eddie Aquilina
One morning in 2018, we were woken up by Chris Fearne happily announcing the “real deal” with an American outfit called Steward.
We hoped it was real because Vitals was already known to be a front for fraudsters who did nothing in three years apart from creating debts and running off with the millions they got from our Castille agents.
Then, the new CEO of Steward, after binning his former CEO of Vitals business cards, declared that Steward had been defrauded by Vitals, which had hidden its de facto state of bankruptcy.
We had got used to corrupt politicians caught in the act playing the victim card but this version of selfie victim was somewhat weird, to say the least.
Strangely enough, Steward CEO Armin Ernst has never discussed the fact that Steward had sent millions to a Swiss company named Accutor with the purpose of paying Tumuluri a five-million success fee.
Of course, I hope that he had no idea that some of that money would ultimately in 2020 end up in the hands of an internationally certified corrupt politician acting as a “consultant”.
I am not aware that this CEO has ever been interrogated or approached by the police about Accutor. Please prove me wrong.
Meanwhile, the opposition leader started judicial proceedings to have the Vitals scam declared fraudulent. It took five years of Muscat and Abela defending the deal in countless sittings but, finally, in February, the court tore it all up.
The government lost.
The people won.
Within hours, the people’s victory miraculously morphed into a Castille victory. Abela declared he had convinced the judge into
deciding that we did not have to pay Steward another €100,000,000. Incredible. Naturally, he took the applause with his custom socialist heart humility.
But he uttered no word about the loss of €300,000,000 total of instalments paid out to Vitals and Steward. No word about the €80,000,000 in unpaid taxes. Not a grunt about the €36,000,000 outstanding bad debt with Bank of Valletta, guaranteed by no one else but the Maltese taxpayer.
Not a word of regret. Not a word of remorse.