Muscat refused to give Vitals inquiry investigators electronic device passwords after raid

Joseph Muscat and his family refused to provide investigators with pass codes to their personal devices following a raid at their home, the Vitals magistral inquiry reveals.

The magistrate later gave the go-ahead for the devices to be handed over to the US Department of Homeland Security Investigations' Cyber Crimes Center (C3) to unlock them and extract all the data.

The inquiry report says that the court-appointed expert delivered the electronic devices to Special Agent Gary Tirabassi at the Westin Dragonara on 12 August 2022. 

Muscat’s Burmarrad home was searched by the police on 19 January 2022 as part of the corruption probe into the Vitals Global Healthcare hospitals deal. Financial crime investigators entered Muscat’s house at around 7:28am and spent at least three hours on the property, seizing his mobile phone and other electronic equipment, along with those of his wife Michelle Muscat and their two daughters.

During the raid, a white Huawei VOG-L29 belonging to Michelle Muscat, an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max belonging to Joseph Muscat, a light blue Apple iPhone 11 Pro and a grey Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max belonging to their daughters, a grey Apple iPad, a white Apple iPhone 5S, another Apple iPad and a pink Huawei BLA-Aloo, and the devices’ corresponding SIM cards were seized during the search.

Joseph and Michelle Muscat refused to provide the six-digit PIN code to unlock their phones. Eventually, the data was extracted from the devices by the American cyber crimes centre and passed on to the Maltese experts for analysis.

Last Sunday, MaltaToday exclusively published the full inquiry report into the hospitals concession.

Two of the most prominent local players in the scandal, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, held numerous companies engaged in consultancy agreements with various other companies to help them win tenders issued by Maltese authorities, in return for a commission fee.

According to the inquiry, the primary companies, Eurybates and Gateway Solutions, were used to skim profits from government tenders in the case of the former, while the latter was used to take over Technoline, which VGH used for ‘exclusive’ supply of medical equipment. 

The inquiry also notes that Schembri, while he was OPM's chief of staff, was fully aware of financial misappropriation of public funds by then VGH CEO, Ram Tumuluri.

With regards to former the Prime Minister, whose government oversaw the fraudulent concession, Joseph Muscat netted over €450,000 in consultancies from several private companies between 2020 and 2021.

Some €60,000 of this came from a Swiss company, Accutor, that had links to some of the Vitals investors. In the summer of 2019, Accutor started receiving monthly payments that would eventually tot up to more than €1 million in payments from Steward Health Care, the American company that took over the hospitals concession. Then Steward boss, Armin Ernst, had described these payments as funds for "political and government support".

Investigators who analysed Muscat’s bank accounts found payments made to the former prime minister starting just months after he stepped down from his role as prime minister, in March 2020.