A cleaning company whose directors are being charged with human trafficking was not awarded an oncology hospital contract by the government, Health Minister Chris Fearne has clarified. The company, he said, was engaged to clean the building by the contractor before it was handed over to the government last year.

Four Directors of MCCS Ltd (Mr Clean) are charged with trafficking 31 Filipino workers to Malta, incorporating and financing a criminal organization and misappropriation. Joseph Degorgio and his children Paul Degorgio, Christian Degorgio and Josianne Bugeja deny the charges.

A court on Tuesday heard how Mr Clean was “recently” awarded a cleaning contract at the new cancer hospital. But in comments to this newspaper, Mr Fearne said the information given in court was either incorrect or unclear. “The Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre is part of Mater Dei Hospital and is falls under the same cleaning contract, provided by Servizi Malta Ltd. The MDH contract was signed in 2008 and was extended to cover the cancer hospital when that opened.”

He explained that the contractor who built the new hospital was contractually bound to carry out the necessary cleaning before handing the hospital over to the government. The consortium got Mr Clean to do so. “I suspect that the information given in court actually referred to the cleaning contract awarded by the contractor before the actual handover. Cleaning services have been carried out by Servizi Malta Ltd ever since the centre opened its doors.”

This newspaper had sent questions to Mr Fearne’s spokesperson on Tuesday but these were not answered by the time the Minister held a press conference yesterday morning.  

Asked if any other health departments had awarded contracts to MCCS Ltd, Mr Fearne said the case had come to light fairly recently and the ministry was still checking whether any other hospitals or entities had a relationship with the company.

Servizi Malta Ltd is actually linked to Mr Clean since the latter is one of four shareholders. Servizi Malta is in fact a consortium made up of Mr Clean, Bad Boy Cleaners, Armonia Holdings and an individual shareholder.

The Degorgios have been charged in their capacity as directors of four companies, including both MCCS Ltd and Servizi Malta. But a court heard this week that the four are not actually directors of Servizi Malta and none of Servizi Malta’s actual directors are involved or charged in the case. The two companies do not share employees and, while MCCS is a shareholder and both companies are registered at the same Balzan office, Servizi Malta employees are given their contract and salary by the latter, not the former.

The court has, in fact, issued a provisional decree exempting Servizi Malta from a freezing order imposed against the directors of Mr Clean. Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera heard how the four were wrongly listed as being directors of the company, which has been unable to pay out employee salaries because of the asset freeze. The Magistrate will hand down an official decree on Monday.

The Malta Independent revealed a couple of weeks ago that Mr Clean had been awarded contracts at 19 different state schools. The Education Department, however, had stopped payments to the company back in December after it was found that its employees were being paid at lower rates than the minimum hourly wage stipulated in anti-precarious work measures.

The education ministry had replied to our questions within a matter of hours whereas the questions sent to the health ministry remain unanswered.