Humility and pointing to the culprits

We need not have waited for a Maltese judge to pronounce himself on the private hospitals agreement with Vitals and Steward Healthcare to be convinced that the whole agreement was a scam and devised to enrich a few individuals and companies.

But Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale’s sentence put together all the bits and pieces like a complicated jigsaw puzzle to prove beyond doubt that there were bad intentions. And that is putting it very mildly.

Surely, Adrian Delia who lost the PN leadership to Bernard Grech has much to be happy for.  Where it not for him, we would have never got this far. This Labour government definitely has egg on its face and if there is a moment for humility than we have discovered it.

On Friday, former prime minister Joseph Muscat attempted to kick the ball in the court of his Labour Cabinet citing collective responsibility. It was a desperate attempt by him to shirk off all responsibility when in truth he is the culprit for this mess.

It is true the Cabinet is ultimately responsible for all decisions taken, but surely the responsibility lies first with Joseph Muscat who knew that his minister, Konrad Mizzi, had even signed a side letter which committed the Maltese government to paying Steward Healthcare €100 million.

No one is mentioning also the influence and importance of Muscat’s former chief of staff who was a key figure in this scandal.

The €100 million side letter was never discussed at Cabinet level or made known to the Cabinet and as far as I know also not to Chris Fearne. Muscat knows that for a fact but conveniently avoids mentioning this.

Nonetheless, the Vitals and Steward Healthcare agreement was blessed by Cabinet and sold as an urgent requirement for upgrading our health system. At the time we had this long debate about privatisation not about whether the investors were serious or not.

The Nationalists felt uncomfortable criticising privatisation and in the process we did not realise that it was a scam by a bunch of cronies aided by Castille. In the end it was an exercise to enrich a bunch of greedy bastards.

In November 2016, on Xtra I asked Chris Fearne who was behind Vitals. He did not reveal the ultimate beneficiary owners of Vitals Global Healthcare but said that the mother company of VGH – Bluestone Special Situations 4 – is managed by the Oxley Group. “It has fund managers who pour billions of euro into it,” he said, while insisting that the government had conducted due diligence tests on VGH.

We now know that the two men behind Vitals, were Mark Pawley and Ram Tumuluri. They were nothing more than cronies. Today Mark Pawley runs a company in Singapore called Blackrun partners, making no reference to his experience in Malta in his profile. Tumuluri is CEO of another new company known as Causis Group Ltd focused, of all things, on charities. He too makes it a point to erase any connection to Malta.

When Vitals landed in Malta, the Muscat machine made it a point to address the issue of bad publicity by appointing former Nationalist MP Professor Albert Fenech on the board and a former PN strategist and TV personality as their media strategist amongst others. It was also a time when criticism was not taken lightly. Vitals also spent money addressing bad publicity, Steward on the other hand sought other more refined methods to silence the press.

Vitals arrived and disappeared, the new company Stewards held on to the senior staff including their CEO Armin Ernst. They took over three Maltese hospitals, with 430 nurses and 89 doctors.  But their contribution to medical health was minimal.

Their existence was dependent on handsome financial subventions from Maltese tax payers.

But it got worse.

Fearing the retribution from those opposed to their presence in Malta they convinced the government to commit to a €100 million pay-out if their contract was rescinded by the courts.

Konrad Mizzi, known in inner Labour circles as ‘il-pażtaż tagħhom’, made it possible.

Justice Depasquale’s sentence made it clear that the contract was rescinded because it was flawed, fraudulent and the concessionaires failed to live up to their obligations.

That saved the Maltese tax payer forking out €100 million and an additional €35 million in outstanding Bank of Valletta loans.

Today, Robert Abela must eat plenty of humble pie. He has to admit that serious mistakes were carried out. He will probably confirm that the government will not appeal and interestingly call for the appeal period to be shortened and heard without further delay. The government wants to take over the operations of Stewards at once.

Abela will now have to the face the music. He can be accused of complicity, but that will not stick, for he was, like many others, not privy to what was happening in Muscat’s very closed circle.

But Abela was a member of the Cabinet and that is not an easy one to get out of. He will also find it difficult to politically disassociate himself from Muscat, though this will be inevitable at some point.

The Prime Minister has to come clean and state the obvious. It will not be easy to digest for many Labourites.

The fault lies with the three people who managed this deal with Vitals and Steward.

The truth is always infinitely more difficult to handle.  But at the end of the day ridding this country of Steward is necessary.

Steward issued a statement on Friday evening that the judgment goes far beyond the court’s remit, arguing that it presents major concerns for the rule of law in Malta. It added that the ruling will have serious implications for the future of foreign investment in the country.

Considering that Vitals and Steward brought no investment and depended on local bank loans and government subventions to exist, I really cannot understand whether they really qualify as an example of foreign direct investment.

And are they being serious when they talk of rule of law? These guys not only wanted an editor investigated, but their CEO, who worked for Vitals presided over an operation that left Malta shortchanged.

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This week, the appeals court presided by Justice Wenzu Mintoff decided that all Freedom of information requests about government contracts with my companies since 2013 requested by Caroline Muscat should be acceded to.

As legal representative I have signed all contracts for advertising campaigns or surveys since 1999. Most of these contracts have been made public but I have no problem being transparent and surely our accounts are infinitely more detailed and revealing than any other media house’s accounts.

The point here is not about access to information requests but rather the selective nature in asking for Freedom of Information requests.

In this scenario, I am left with no other choice other than to request information on all government contributions to all the other media houses in the last 20 years.

I say 20 years because Caroline Muscat, a PN apologist, wishes to give the impression that before a certain date, media apartheid did not exist and that journalism started and ends with the online platform she owns.

We can then compare and see what has been happening to government advertising or services. And yes, I believe that without State intervention, media houses will cease to exist.

And since we are talking of transparency can Caroline Muscat perhaps declare all her revenues and the origin of all her contributions and contributors? And also make known who all her writers are?

I have no problem being shown for what I am – a maverick, ambitious, hard-working and abrasive media owner. But let us see what is happening in the whole media scene not only in the ones owned by myself.