Cassola wants Standards probe into Malta Enterprise boss over NAO non-compliance

The independent politician Arnold Cassola has requested an investigation from the Commissioner for Public Standards in Life, on Malta Enterprise CEO Kurt Farrugia, and the chairman of the State Aid Monitoring Board, Paul Zahra.

Cassola said the latest National Audit Office investigation into the hospitals’ privatisation to Vitals and Steward had revealed that Malta Enterprise had failed to reply to the queries from the NAO in its investigation.

The NAO said it had sought information relating to the lease agreement entered into by the Maltese government with the Queen Mary University London for the Barts Medical School in Gozo – which was to be constructed by hospitals’ concessionaires Vitals and later Steward –  together with an account of the payments received by Malta Enterprise in this respect. Similarly, queries submitted to the State Aid Monitoring Board remained unaddressed.

“This omertà from State authorities is unacceptable,” Cassola said in his complaint to Standards czar Joseph Azzopardi.

“These two men tried to sabotage the NAO inquiry into the misappropriation of over €400 million by Vitals and Steward, to the detriment of the Maltese taxpayer, with the complicity of a number of politicians, among them former minister Konrad Mizzi.

“Instead of carrying out their duty… these acted in omertà fashion, which characterises the mafioso mentality that has infiltrated the State. In full impunity, they acted against the interests of the Maltese people by ignoring the NAO’s requests, making it difficult for the Auditor General to arrive at the truth.”

In its reaction to the NAO report, Malta Enteprise said in a comment solicited by MaltaToday that throughout the audit, the Auditor General had engaged in numerous consultations with past and present representatives from ME.

“We have consistently responded to the Audit Office’s inquiries, offering comprehensive explanations based on our understanding and within the purview of the governing legal framework,” Malta Enterprise CEO Kurt Farrugia told MaltaToday.

But Farrugia said that ME had informed the NAO, that under legal counsel it was bound by the confidentiality clauses specified in the Malta Enterprise Act. “These provisions primarily safeguard its clients, which invariably are investors in Malta, and the Corporation. Releasing information that would violate these confidentiality provisions leads to criminal prosecution, as confirmed by independent legal advisors,” Farrugia said.

“We want to underline that Malta Enterprise has exhibited total transparency and cooperation with all investigative procedures. We have complied with all requests for documentation from the Courts as part of an ongoing magisterial inquiry. It should be stressed that the documents requested by the NAO were already provided to the magisterial investigation before the Audit Office asked for such information,” Farrugia added.