1. The Ponzi scheme 

Investigators did not mince their words. 

The hospitals' deal had all the hallmarks of a “Ponzi scheme”.

Its design was simple: divert millions in public funds into private hands. 

A close-knit coterie of politicians, enablers and front men were the suspected beneficiaries of the scheme. 

The supposed investors behind Vitals, trusted by Joseph Muscat’s government to run three public hospitals, did little by way of investment. 

On the rare occasion when private funds were invested in the hospitals, these were largely “swallowed up in fees and expenses” charged by people connected to Vitals, or used to refund earlier investors. 

Public money was even used to buy or establish companies to generate private profits. 

One such example is Technoline. 

A total of €5 million in public funds was used to buy the medical supply company. 

Former government officials Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi were set to take a cut from this, via a secret stake in Technoline. 

Saba Abbas, Vitals’ financial controller, drew up a report estimating that €26 million in public money was siphoned off in just under 18 months. 

The report landed on Schembri’s desk in 2017. Instead of immediately reporting the fraud to the police, investigators suspect Schembri used the information as leverage to boot out Vitals and usher in Steward. 

2. The enablers

This mass suspected diversion of public money had many alleged enablers and architects. 

Auditors, lawyers and accountants were all allegedly complicit. 

Some faces are familiar, others less so. Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna earned himself the moniker of a “professional money launderer”. 

Tonna, who set up secret Panama companies for Schembri and Mizzi, was one of the early “architects” of the hospitals project. 

Technoline’s owner on paper, Ivan Vassallo, is another suspected launderer. 

Vassallo “created” invoices to lend a façade of legitimacy to suspected kickback payments. 

Vitals' auditor Chris Spiteri was allegedly paid to look the other way.

Instead of scrutinising transactions, Spiteri “set aside his professional ethics” and accepted a €50,000 bonus from Steward to give the Vitals books a clean bill of health. 

The result: a “clean but ultimately unethical audit of Vitals,” which facilitated Steward’s takeover of the hospital concession in 2018. 

Lawyer David Meli, who represented both Vitals and Steward, was identified as being in a position of authority to identify suspect financial arrangements and flows involving public funds. 

The law firm DF Advocates and its partners have also been pinpointed as key enablers in the early concession deal. 

A total of €5 million in public funds was used to buy the medical supply company

3. The triumvirate 

Muscat, Schembri and Mizzi have been charged with criminal association. 

This was not just about turning a blind eye. 

Investigators charge that the ex-prime minister, his chief aide and the former health minister were actively complicit. 

Of the three, Schembri is the one most heavily implicated.  He and “secret” Vitals beneficiary Shaukat Ali were two sides of the same coin. 

The moment Mizzi signed off on the deal, Ali earned himself a $5 million success fee payable to a company in Dubai. 

At that same moment, Ali was actively setting up “money laundering structures” in Dubai for Mizzi and Schembri.

The timing was not a coincidence, investigators allege. 

Similar “money laundering structures” were set up for Mizzi and Schembri in Panama. Muscat stood by his two men when their Panama plans were outed in 2016. 

Unproven claims linked Muscat to a third Panama company – Egrant. 

The three ex-government officials have once again been connected to “money-laundering structures”, this time in Switzerland. 

Accutor, a Swiss company, was pumped with millions in cash by Steward Health Care. 

Steward had been ushered in by Muscat’s government as the saviours of the hospital deal. 

After pumping Accutor full of cash, Muscat, Schembri and Mizzi formed either direct or indirect financial relationships with the company. 

The chances of these relationships having been formed independently and by coincidence are “negligible,” investigators say. 

4. The spectators

Others in power stood by while all this happened. 

Politicians and their mandarins failed to put a stop to the rot. 

Chris Fearne, Edward Scicluna and their respective permanent secretaries Joseph Rapa and Alfred Camilleri have all been charged with fraud. Mizzi’s permanent secretary Ronald Mizzi has also been charged. 

The inquiry offers snippets into their actions... or inactions. 

Fearne was e-mailed details about the Vitals “consortium” by Tonna as early as July 2014. 

He was also copied in on e-mails about the due diligence – or lack of it – that had been carried out on the people behind Vitals. 

At the time of this correspondence, in June 2016, Fearne had already taken over from Mizzi as health minister. 

Other evidence suggests Fearne was kept in the dark about certain aspects of the deal. 

Scicluna too appears to have taken a backseat role throughout. 

Months after the deal was sealed, e-mail correspondence shows Scicluna was still awaiting financial details about the concession from Mizzi. 

A presentation about the deal’s impact on public finances was given at the Office of the Prime Minister. Mizzi and Schembri were present. Scicluna and Camilleri were not, investigators concluded based on analysis of e-mail correspondence. 

Scicluna also appears to have been unaware that Camilleri sat on the board of Projects Malta. Projects Malta was the government entity tasked with handling the “fraudulent” award of the contract to Vitals. 

“He [Camilleri] is either dumb by accepting to be on a board when he is not informed on what is happening or he was getting paid and thus he closed an eye or else he knew what was happening and he did not say anything to anybody”, a ministry official told Scicluna. 

Ronald Mizzi appears to have been heavily involved at various stages of the concession. 

According to testimony, members of the Projects Malta evaluation committee were directly answerable to him, bypassing the entity’s former chairperson Adrian Said. 

Mizzi e-mailed Said a list of the people who would be appointed to the evaluation committee. The initial list included Tonna, who was later replaced by his colleague Manuel Castagna.