A side deal protecting Steward Healthcare from a court annulment of the hospitals contracts is clearly an abuse of power, according to former opposition leader Adrian Delia.
The August 2019 deal, signed by former tourism minister Konrad Mizzi, will trigger a €100 million government payment to Steward Healthcare if a court case opened by Delia gets the hospitals contract annulled.
Delia took the government to court in February 2018 in a bid to cancel the 2015 hospitals contract over Vitals Global Healthcare’s (VGH) failure to deliver on its contractual requirements.
Steward Healthcare took over the contract from VGH that same month.
Delia said the end result of the side deal is that, for some obscure reason, Mizzi thought it fit to ascertain that Steward walks away with €100 million in hard-earned taxpayers’ money, even if a court finds it to be in absolute fault and breach of its contracts.
“This is not only an administrative ministerial or governmental excess, but also clearly an abuse of power, an intentional direct favouritism, gross breach of public procurement rules and massive abuse of public funds. It is the epitome of bad governance and the clearest violation of public representation,” Delia told Times of Malta.
Delia said the intent was clearly to safeguard against his case, which was and still is an active threat, and also covers against other potential legal threats.
Various government officials have distanced themselves from the deal, despite giving Mizzi a cabinet mandate to sign it.
Two government sources have claimed the implications of the August 2019 side-letter was never clearly spelt out in cabinet.
Multiple reports by the National Audit Office have detailed the “gross negligence” in the way the original concessionaries Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH) were handed the running of the St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo hospitals.
The auditor general says VGH should have been barred because of “collusive behaviour” between the government and the company through a secret agreement made before the 2015 tender was even issued.
A lack of coordination between the health and energy ministries, who were responsible for different aspects of the contract, “allowed for the concession to remain an unimplementable project, an insurmountable challenge and irreparable situation for the government to manage, whose administrative and political weaknesses were all too readily exploited by the VGH”, the NAO said.
In uncharacteristically strong language, Auditor General Charles Deguara said the belief that VGH could live up to its contractual obligations under the “dubious concession” was a result of “naivety” by certain government officials, and “gross negligence” in the case of others.