Sant recalls ‘brusque Verzè’ as San Raffaele’s scandals rock the Vatican

Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has issued a belated reaction to accusations of the “arrogant” manner in which Labour severed its relationship with the controversial Italian hospice group San Raffaele, whose €1.5 billion debt this year has ultimately led to the suicide of its financial controller just two weeks ago.

Sant took the momentous decision in 1996 to cease working with the San Raffaele group, whose cancer research hospital was inherited from the previous Nationalist government, and build a general hospital that later became Mater Dei Hospital.

The San Raffaele is highly regarded for the quality of its medical care and its research, but as the suicide of financial administrator Mario Cal makes it clear, it is in a crisis.

Writing in it-Torca, Sant says his decision to stop the San Raffaele project was met with such consternation from founder Don Luigi Verzè, that the priest offered to use his influence with European political leaders to give the Maltese government funding through the Council of Europe.

“Verzè finally revealed the way he was used to work. He told me that if the Maltese government applied for a loan under the social fund of the Council of Europe, his friends would help us. But we were already thinking of applying for the loan. The last thing we needed was Verzè sticking his nose in the matter and messing it up. So at that point I told him we were not interested in the loan.”

Ruminating on his meeting with Verzè at Castille, Sant said he had rarely met “such a brusque man, even when his arrogance did not have a leg to stand on.”

Sant also put paid to claims by Monsignor Charles Vella – a courtesan of Verzè who ‘sold’ the idea of the San Raffaele branch to former prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami – that Italian prime ministers Romano Prodi and Lamberto Dini complained to him on the way he treated the San Raffaele movement. “I did have conversations with them… but not on San Raffaele. This is an invention of Mgr Vella.”

Sant said Labour’s decision was that it was not possible to run two general hospitals in Malta and that the cancer research facility being built under San Raffaele’s auspices was not being done in consultation with Maltese doctors. Fenech Adami’s government had agreed to finance the construction of the hospital according to the plans sent from Milan, with Swedish construction giant Skanska appointed to build the hospital.

“To abandon the work started by Skanska, the Maltese government had to pay millions in compensation. So after various studies, it was concluded that the best option was to turn the project into a general hospital instead of hanging on to St Luke’s general hospital,” Sant said.

“San Raffaele didn’t exactly move fast in its works… they usually sent the wrong designs. Skanska wouldn’t complain, because they were paid for each extra job even when they were told to drop down something they built. Don Verzè’s people on the other hand kept charging us for their ‘consultancies’ and ‘services’.”

The San Raffaele Mount Tabor foundation has been rocked by scandal ever since it announced a massive financial hole that ultimately led to the suicide of financial controller Mario Cal on 2 October, at his San Raffaele Hospital office in Milan.

According to the latest balance sheet for San Raffaele, founder Don Luigi Verzè is dealing with a shortfall of €1.5 billion. Bad investments and expenses unrelated to medical care – including personal aircraft, hotels in Sardinia, and mango plantations in South America – the hospital is on the verge of collapse.

Milan’s chief prosecutor Edmondo Bruti Liberati announced that the organisation is under investigation for fraudulent bankruptcy.

Pope Benedict XVI's right-hand man Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone offered €250 million to keep San Raffaele afloat, with some contributions coming from the businessman Vittorio Malcanzana, a friend of Cardinal Bertone.