Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Brian Tonna, Karl Cini and their respective companies are claiming that foreign experts who worked on the Vitals inquiry that led to them being criminally prosecuted had “potential conflicts of interest.”

The high-profile defendants made their claims in a judicial letter filed on Wednesday morning against 26 experts and a forensics company.

They served the letter just minutes before the start of a hearing in their court case.

In the letter, the defendants say the experts’ work contained “serious and fundamental flaws” and was “fraught with material inaccuracies, misrepresentations and methodological flaws.”

The inquiring magistrate, Gabriella Vella, had relied upon their work to conclude the inquiry and recommend criminal charges against them, they said.

All these caused substantial prejudice to the claimants who were now informing the experts that they would pursue all legal avenues not only to recover damages suffered but also to fully redress the harm done through such “erroneous and unreliable expert testimony.”

The judicial letter was signed by lawyers Edward Gatt, Mark Vassallo and Stephen Tonna Lowell.

It follows a similar one filed by another defendant in a related case, Alfred Camilleri.

Camilleri, a former top civil servant, alleged that one of the experts in the inquiry, Sam Sittlington, had solicited a six-figure consultancy contract with the Malta Police Force while serving as a court expert in the Vitals inquiry.

The UK government had fired Sittlington for doing something similar in Guyana, Camilleri and his lawyers noted.

Schembri, Mizzi, Tonna and Cini are among a long list of people, including former prime minister Joseph Muscat, who face criminal charges related to the 2017 hospitals deal.

That deal saw Vitals Global Healthcare, and later, Steward Health Care take over the running of three state hospitals. 

Dozens of individuals and several companies stand accused of serious crimes including money laundering, corruption and bribery.