Former Opposition Leader Adrian Delia said today that former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had confirmed in court that the Vitals group did not meet the obligations listed in the contract it signed with the Maltese government.

Speaking to journalists after Muscat testified in the case Delia filed for the return of the hospitals to the public, Delia said: "When I asked if Vitals did anything while under a contract which costs hundreds of millions, Muscat confirmed that it only gave us 5 million worth of work and resources meaning that Vitals did not follow up in their obligations."

Muscat tried to justify the fact that they will be taking thousands of euro from us every day, Delia said. “I definitely do not think that our people should be robbed from such money each day, whether he thinks it is or not,” he said.

In the beginning, Delia said Muscat did not want to give us any information on the alleged €100 million termination clause that was signed with Vitals. “This is all coming from people's money,” Delia said. “However, after beating around the bush, it resulted that after summer of 2019, meaning much later than when I opened this case against him, this contract was in fact signed, with the Cabinet’s consensus. However, former Finance Minister and now Central Bank Governor Edward Scicluna said the opposite, so one of them is lying. We have to find out who the person is. Maybe Konrad Mizzi can enlighten us."

Mizzi was supposed to testify today as well, but the court was informed he is in quarantine.

Delia added that Muscat tried to justify the deal, sayinf that Vitals made a €35 million investment in Barts Medical School in Gozo. But this was only done so that Vitals can make a profit, Delia said. So, from all this enthusiasm they had on making this massive investment, the only actual investment that was made was done across the private sector which is not for the benefit of the public.

"When I asked if this investment was to replace the investment in the Gozo General Hospital, Muscat did not answer," Delia said.

"What came out from this hearing is that there was a MoU which had nothing to do with the Rfp. This confirms what the Auditor General said that the government had agreed to give a multi-million contract to someone from beforehand but then tried to make it look like it was transparent in its procedure," Delia added.

Delia was asked about the comment Muscat made that the money was used to pay workers and for medicines and Vitals never profited from them. "It seemed like Muscat was very interested in knowing if they made a profit or not. Maybe that is what he is interested in for some reason. I was clear in saying that this is not what it is about as what matters is whether our people are being robbed. What you are saying is not quite correct all as what Muscat said was that there were €265 million that were paid effectively which left €118 million. Taking the money left across the past five years, we can see that there was no form of maintenance works in St Luke's or GGH."

Asked what he thinks about the government taking ownership of hospitals but management stays under Steward, Delia said that he will agree with any directive that will give Malta's hospitals back to the state which is what he is trying to achieve in court. However, he cannot go into detail as he does not know them; "what matters is that we deal with these foreigners from a position of strength, not of weakness and dictate what we want from the deal."

He was asked to explain how people can be robbed when the company is losing money in reality. "If the government pays someone without them making profit, the money is already lost as our people did not profit from it at all. They were supposed to get €6 million as a success fee, but there was no success but they still got the money as a termination fee."