A court of law has confirmed the diagnosis made by Auditor General Charles Deguara in December 2021 about the rotten nature of the hospitals privatisation deal.
As he was empowered to do by law, Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale went further, rescinding all the agreements reached within that deal and ordering public property to be returned to the people.
The institutions – two of them, in this case – have done their work.
But before the prime minister starts bragging about it, the government must show unequivocally how it intends to safeguard “the national interest”, as it pledged to do soon after the judgment was handed down.
Because the national interest demands that all those who dipped their finger into the €4 billion pie be brought to justice and their illegal gains retrieved.
Likewise, any similar arrangements concluded by Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi must be thoroughly scrutinised to ensure they were not part of a “fraudulent plot” much larger than the judge spoke about in the epic saga of a scandal.
"Let’s hope that Robert Abela will not attempt to defend them all by saying they have already paid a political price, as he had done in relation to the former health minister"
The ‘whodunnit’ probe must go beyond Muscat and Mizzi and involve people like Keith Schembri, who was a major decision-maker as chief of staff at the OPM.
Let’s hope that Robert Abela will not attempt to defend them all by saying they have already paid a political price, as he had done in relation to the former health minister.
The “failure in governance”, the auditor general had concluded, rested squarely on Mizzi and “to a lesser extent” on his permanent secretary, Ronald Mizzi. Still, he remains a permanent secretary, even though he was moved from the tourism to the economy ministry after the last election.
The National Audit Office had also noted that, instead of holding Vitals Global Healthcare to account on its contractual obligations, government representatives provided “waiver after waiver” with respect to the requirement to secure financing. These “representatives” also need to be identified for they can no longer be trusted with public funds.
And what about Malta Enterprise that failed to cooperate with the auditor general in his investigation into the deal? That stance was deemed “dubious” by the auditor general.
With the diagnosis now clear to all, it is time to perform drastic surgery, even if so late in the day, to remove the cancer.
The government says it is analysing the 140-page judgment which Steward Malta described as “outrageous and without merit”. It may decide to appeal, though that would, at best, appear incongruent with the stand taken by its president, Nadine Delicata, a year ago.
The concession, she wrote, was already “doomed” and “in a state of dire emergency” when Steward took over. Vitals did not deliver on its obligations, “nor had the government demanded they do so”, she said, adding Vitals “created a raft of companies, shifting assets between them and burning through funds”.
Mr Justice Depasquale had no doubt that Steward “was well aware of the shortcomings of Vitals” even observing that conditions it had demanded to vary the service concession were “part of Steward’s fraud”.
Had the government and all the institutions of this country really worked, there would probably not have been the need to wait five long years to determine what was staring everyone in the eyes.
Instead it was up to former PN leader Adrian Delia to take up the cudgels and go to court. This is a role that a relevant and effective opposition should increasingly be fulfilling.
The Vitals/Steward scandal is far from over.