The considerations of the National Audit Office report, which found evidence of collusion between the government and Vitals over the 2015 hospitals deal, are to be included within the scope of an existing police investigation.
The police told Times of Malta on Wednesday that an investigation had been under way since 2019 into various allegations in relation to the hospitals concession and that a magisterial inquiry had also been initiated to safeguard evidence
The police did not reply to the question of whether their investigation would specifically probe former minister Konrad Mizzi and Joseph Muscat, the former prime minister.
In an audit report published on Tuesday, the NAO found that Vitals Global Healthcare should have been barred from the hospitals bid because of “collusive behaviour” between the government and the company, through a secret agreement made before the tender was even issued.
It found a succession of serious shortcomings in the process to award VGH a 30-year concession to run Gozo General, St Luke’s and Karin Grech hospitals.
The audit was first triggered in 2016, when the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin – Voice of the Workers (UĦM) and the Medical Association of Malta requested an investigation of the contracts awarded by government to VGH.
The NAO noted that its interest in the secret agreement was heightened when the government did not hand over relevant documentation.
The investigation has been under way since 2019
The hospitals deal, worth around €1 billion, is also the subject of an ongoing magisterial inquiry into alleged criminal negligence by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna and former ministers Chris Cardona and Mizzi.
Mizzi has maintained that the did nothing wrong when negotiating the privatisation of the three public hospitals, despite the damning report by the auditor general that found no minister had authorised the deal, with the blame resting “squarely” on him.
Asked for his position on this, he has denied that the responsibility rested with him and said he wanted all the information in the public domain “in the interest of transparency”.
Mizzi urged the government to “immediately publish relevant documentation referenced in the NAO report” and said that when an evaluation committee presented a report on the project to cabinet, ministers had given it the thumbs-up.
Opposition leader Adrian Delia and Alternattiva Demokratika have called for a criminal investigation into those responsible, following the NAO’s report.
Delia has said the concession, currently run by US company Steward Health Care, should be nulled, while AD chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said it was clear the concession was “knowingly and purposely designed such that public assets were milked by Vitals to make huge gains in a classic case of public loss and private gain”.
Vitals crashed out of the concession two years after taking over, when the investors failed to raise the required financing to see the project through. Steward Health Care then took on the deal.
Mizzi resigned from cabinet in November 2019 in the midst of a political crisis triggered by the 2017 assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. He was ousted from the Labour parliamentary group in June and today is an independent MP.