A firm linked to “suspicious” payments received by Joseph Muscat is breaching company law by failing to file audited accounts.
Accutor Limited, an offshoot of the Swiss operation that paid Muscat €60,000, has been breaching its obligations to file accounts since 2017.
Wasay Bhatti, who engaged the former prime minister as his “consultant”, is the sole director of Accutor in Malta.
Regus, a business address provider in Malta, has further accused Accutor Malta of ignoring its demands to stop listing its St Julian’s building as the company’s registered address.
In filings with the Malta Business Registry (MBR), Regus asked the registrar to put on record that Accutor Malta no longer has permission to list the address as its registered office.
“The company has been advised in writing on more than three separate occasions before us resorting to this communication with your kind selves,” Regus said in a letter to the MBR.
The fact there is no physical office and failure to file accounts are indicative that Accutor has abandoned its presence in Malta.
Accutor's ties to Joseph Muscat
Accutor found itself at the centre of a storm last year after Times of Malta revealed how the company acted as a fulcrum to receive and pass on payments to key players in the controversial hospitals’ deal.
Shortly after resigning as prime minister in 2020, Muscat started to receive payments from Accutor’s Swiss branch.
He would go on to receive four payments of €15,000 each, two from Accutor and another two from Spring X Media, the company that contracted him as its “consultant”.
Muscat strongly denies any wrongdoing, insisting he can prove the payments were in connection with legitimate consultancy work he carried out.
Suspicions that the transactions could be a cover for kickbacks linked to the hospitals deal triggered a search at Muscat’s home and office in January as part of an ongoing magisterial inquiry into the Vitals deal.
The deal saw Muscat’s government hand over the running of St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare, an entity with no prior track record in healthcare.
The people behind Vitals cashed out just two years after taking over the hospitals by selling the government concession to Steward Health Care.
According to Steward Health Care, the payouts to the people behind Vitals were upon their request channelled to Accutor in Switzerland.
Two former Accutor Switzerland directors, Kamal Sharma and Tyrone Greenshields, have blown the whistle on how the company was used by Bhatti to carry out potential suspicious transactions.
They quit their positions as Accutor directors in 2019 over their concerns, several months prior to the Muscat payments.
Bhatti denies any wrongdoing.