Chris Fearne takes Steward frame-up allegations to the police

Health minister Chris Fearne will be asking the police commissioner to investigate who financed and committed a frame-up against him, after media revelations that Steward Healthcare hired a private intelligence firm to accuse him of accepting a bribe.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Fearne said the media reports amount to “irrefutable proof” that he always stood his ministerial ground in the national interest.

“Around €6,500,000 were spent to fabricate a story with a single malign purpose: to politically eliminate me. This is how much filthy money was paid to try to get Chris Fearne out of the way,” he said.

He said the company first tried to find dirt on him, and only when they failed to find anything that they chose to fabricate a story.

“Quite simply, this was a pitch dark €6 million frame up to try to block me from continuing to do my duty towards our patients, my ministry and my country.”

“When this fabricated story was first published, I had immediately gone to the Police Commissioner asking him to investigate. Not surprisingly, it did not take him long to conclude that the story was all fake. Today I shall be going to the Police Commissioner once again, this time to ask him to act against who financed and who committed this heinous frame up.”

According to documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and shared with Times of Malta and the Boston Globe, Steward clashed with the Maltese health minister over the terms of its agreement to manage several hospitals in Malta.

In response, Steward enlisted CT Group, a London-based private intelligence firm, to create a damaging report accusing the health minister of accepting a substantial bribe. This report was subsequently circulated among journalists, aiming to discredit the minister.

These bribery claims started to appear in several Pakistani news portals, and eventually made their way to a Brussels-based and a Ukrainian news outlet. The claims alleged that Fearne's chief of staff, Carmen Ciantar, received thousands in payments from a company linked to Vitals Global Healthcare.