‘Missing’ Vitals MOU found, passed on to Auditor General

The Office of the Prime Minister has located, and passed on a memorandum of understanding for the mysterious Vitals Global Healthcare consortium, believed to be ‘missing’, to the National Audit Office. 

A government spokesperson confirmed today that Robert Abela’s office had located the document first denied to The Times of Malta in a freedom of information request to Malta Enterprise, at the OPM. 

A court of law had upheld ME’s refusal to disclose the MOU, signed before any expression of interest for the privatisation of Malta’s hospitals took place. 

The document pertaining to the deal reached by the government with Vitals for the transfer of three private hospitals, was claimed to be missing by the Muscat administration when the National Audit Office launched an investigation into the tendering process.  

“After the report was published, I immediately ordered that the document needed to be found... my position is clear, I have given them a deadline of today to find the missing document,” Robert Abela said on Monday. 

MaltaToday understands that the MOU, signed by Malta Enterprise with Vitals’ proponents well before they formally tendered for the hospitals’ concession, could have been inside the Office of the Prime Minister all along.  

Last week a damming report was published by the National Audits Office (NAO) found collusion between Vitals Global Healthcare and the government on the hospital deal. The NAO said that the multi-million euro deal to transfer three state hospitals to an obscure private company was “predetermined.”  

READ MORE: Damning report finds collusion between Vitals and government on hospitals deal  

Previously the government had it assumed responsibility for the report by sacking the former Health Minister Konrad Mizzi. Mizzi was expelled from the Labour parliamentary group in a vote backed by 99% of the party’s executive, after being implicated in a scandal where state utility Enemalta was said to have paid an over-inflated price for a Montenegrin wind farm.   

READ MORE: We sacked Konrad Mizzi – government reply over Vitals ‘collusion’ report