Well before the government made its intention to privatise the hospitals known, Vitals’ shareholders of Vitals had already concluded a memorandum of understanding with the government, the court confirmed. Vitals ‘should have been disqualified’, Steward ‘reprehensible’ In a terse statement following the ruling, the government said it is analysing the sentence and said it will protect the national interest, health care workers and patients. The fact that all the promised projects were never completed and that some had never even been started, the court ruled in rejecting all of the defendant’s pleas, was “all part of the fraudulent plot”.Īll three related agreements, as well as their amendments, have been ordered to be rescinded and annulled and the hospitals returned to the government.
The fraud, according to the ruling handed down this afternoon, “persisted not only prior but also throughout the concession”. The court ruled the process had been vitiated by fraud throughout the entire process: before the contract was signed, over the course of the contract and after the concession was sold to Steward. Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale methodically shot down the government’s defence point by point and ruled that Vitals should have been disqualified from the concession from the very outset. The case to have the contracts and all ancillary documents rescinded – including Steward’s €100 million escape clause – had been opened in 2018 by then-opposition leader Adrian Delia in his personal capacity as an MP against then-prime minister Joseph Muscat.
The largest ever deal a Maltese government has ever stuck with the private sector that saw a concession for three public hospitals being given to Vitals Global Healthcare has been rescinded by the courts after finding it had been fraudulent throughout – from before its very conception to when the public concession was handed over to Steward Health Care.
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