Chris Fearne, Malta’s Deputy Prime Minister, who is to become Malta’s next European Commissioner, and former Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, currently Governor of the Central Bank, are also indicted in the same file. They are being prosecuted for fraud, embezzlement and fraudulent gains.
The inquiry was opened in 2015 after investigative journalism revealed that Joseph Muscat’s Labor government had decided to privatize three public hospitals in Malta to Vitals Global Healthcare in a deal conservatively estimated at £4 billion Of euro.
This company, which had no expertise in the health field, resold the concession after 21 months to another firm, Steward Health Care, without having made any of the announced investments.
On Tuesday, Muscat denied the charges, maintaining that he is innocent.
“If they weren’t so serious, the accusations against me would be laughable. Without even hearing me, the authorities decided to denigrate me by accusing me of corruption, money laundering and the establishment of a criminal organization, going so far as to claim that I had received 30 million euros”, said the former Maltese Prime Minister, on his Facebook page.
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“I will be happy to dismantle each of these accusations and show that they are based not only on inventions, but also on lies,” the former Maltese prime minister also claims.
Journalist Caruana Galizia has published extensive investigations into the privatization deal between the Maltese government and Vitals Global Healthcare. She was harassed and threatened, and then killed on October 16, 2017, when an explosive was planted under her car.
Joseph Muscat resigned in 2019, after the political scandal caused by the assassination of the journalist.
An independent inquiry in 2019 found no evidence of government involvement in the assassination, but said the state must take responsibility for creating “a culture of impunity”.
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Tags: Prime Minister Malta Officials Criminally Prosecuted Corruption Privatization Hospitals
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