If the PN’s €400 million hospitals claim was false why did Robert Abela seek €760 million and then €488 million euro from Steward at the International Chamber of Commerce? If Steward repaid the whole €884,644,629 of taxpayers’ money in brilliant healthcare services to the Maltese people why did Abela terminate their concession? If Steward fulfilled all their contractual obligations why didn’t Abela pay them the €100 million that Konrad Mizzi promised them?
If Steward were so clean why is the FBI and the US Department of Justice criminally investigating them? If Steward were “the real deal” why have they filed for bankruptcy? If all the money we paid Steward went on healthcare where did the money used to dig up dirt on Chris Fearne come from? If Steward were so brilliant how come nobody noticed when they left? Why did the health service just keep functioning as if nothing ever happened?
Before the ICC ruling was published Robert Abela flooded the media in a coordinated attempt to distort the narrative. The ICC ruling, Abela insisted, showed that his government “defended and will continue to defend Malta’s national interest”. The ICC ruling showed the complete opposite – “the primary victims of this failure are the citizens of Malta”. No matter how frantically Abela claims to have defended Maltese citizens, the truth is black on white.
“The ruling proved that my government successfully defended Malta’s national interests with skill, competence and subject knowledge,” Abela bluffed. The ICC commented: “Given the substantial sums at stake in this arbitration, it might have been expected that testimony would be provided by those with the most direct knowledge of the facts”.
Despite his claims, Abela “did not offer evidence from key players either at the initial stage” or at any other time. Abela didn’t ask Chris Fearne to testify. Fearne knew perfectly well what was going on. He knew Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were doing deals with Vitals and Steward behind his back on Joseph Muscat’s orders. Fearne was the one who requested the NAO investigation. He could have told the ICC that Steward spent money from our taxes to dig up dirt on him. He could have outlined precisely how Vitals and Steward failed to reach any of the key milestones set out in the concession – and how Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela still kept paying them millions.
“The opposition sold a falsehood to the public,” Abela commented. “We hear so many claims that Steward fled Malta with 400 million and that government paid them for services they didn’t provide….they kept repeating the same claim hoping that people would eventually believe them”.
Abela too believed the Opposition. His government sought €760 million in compensation presumably because that’s what Abela calculated Steward owed the Maltese taxpayer. Abela claimed millions in losses from Steward for their “failure to invest in St Luke’s Hospital, Karin Grech Hospital and Gozo General Hospital”.
But after the disastrous outcome of the ICC arbitration Abela changed his tune – “the most important conclusion from the proceedings is that the Maltese people were not robbed but were given fair value for the services they received”.
“The ICC ruled there was no fraud,” Abela lied on Wednesday 5 November. His own government claimed at the ICC that Steward had “fraudulently misrepresented its financial position when taking over the concession”.
Abela praised the ICC tribunal for carrying out “a rigorous analysis”. “This decision”, he boasted, “was taken by some of the world’s best legal experts, clearly showing that the Opposition had sold a falsity to the public”. Abela is only saying that because he failed to recover one cent for the Maltese taxpayer. He’s bragging that he defended the interest of the Maltese when he didn’t even present key witnesses to testify.
Labour’s Alex Agius Saliba had the audacity to write to all MEPs claiming that the tribunal decision “confirmed Malta’s commitment to transparency, good governance and the protection of the public interest”. The Labour Party is parroting the same false narrative that “the report clearly shows the government defended the national interest in the best possible way”.
Labour’s Jonathan Attard is trying to pin the blame for his own government’s failure to recoup any money on Adrian Delia. “The Labour government,” Minister Attard falsely claimed, “was already positioning itself to take legal action against Steward”. Labour was doing nothing of the sort. Abela was negotiating with Steward, egged on by his predecessor Joseph Muscat, to give them a more “bankable deal”. Abela met Armin Ernst and Joseph Muscat in his office in Castille. Robert Abela even recruited his own father to contribute to those discussions. Agreement had been reached and arrangements had been made to sign a new deal. The American ambassador was on stand-by to attend the signing ceremony, before it was called off at the last minute. Abela kept paying Steward more and more millions of our taxes every year. He stood in parliament defending Steward despite their failure to meet any of the milestones stipulated in the concession agreement.
“Every cent that government paid was returned to our healthcare service,” Attard claimed. That is pure deception.
The real deception is when you tell the country you defended the national interest even as the ICC labelled the hospitals concession a failure and concluded that “the primary victims…are the citizens of Malta”. The ICC is right. We are the real victims – €884.6 million of our money gone, no new hospitals, no money recovered and now a massive bill to cover the legal costs of the ICC arbitration.