The National Audit Office on Tuesday added yet another chapter to the ongoing saga surrounding the government’s decision to sell three public hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare.

In what was the second part of their audit into the deal, the NAO this time exposed how the government had perpetuated the failure of the concession – which VGH pulled out of after it flunked financially – by continually endorsing multiple waivers of the requirement for VGH to secure financing.

The NAO further exposed how the concession was consistently revised in favour of VGH’s interests – with what was expected from VGH being reduced, but with the amount the government was paying VGH for those commitments remaining the same.

The NAO has already exposed how VGH should have been excluded from the selection process for the sale of the three hospitals in the first place, owing to “collusive behaviour” between them and the government and said that the deal was clearly pre-determined for VGH to win.

The government man who has to answer for all of this as it was under his political responsibility is of course the erstwhile Minister Konrad Mizzi.

Except Konrad Mizzi – who has made such a show in recent months of being open to answer any and every question related to another of his projects, the Electrogas power station, because he had apparently done nothing wrong – refused to meet with the NAO on the concession.

This saga smelt fishy from the get go. A lot of things weren’t clear about the project straight off the bat: who were the people behind the concession?  What was that process which led to the hospitals being awarded to them? What were they even doing with the millions in taxpayer’s money which was being given to them?

What was clear from the very start though is that VGH was not equipped to run the three public hospitals.

What we have learnt since then makes that even clearer. 

With what we now know and with what has been exposed, it’s time for things to go beyond an investigation by the national auditor who, of course, has a limited remit.

It’s time for this deal to be criminally investigated.  It was actually time for that quite a while ago, but better late than never.

If Konrad Mizzi does not want to answer the auditor’s questions about the deal and be held accountable for the deal and its misgivings, then it is time that he faces those same questions by the police.

The biggest insult in all of this is that we – the taxpayer – continue to pay for this deal.  The government is still paying millions of our money every year for this concession.

In 2022 alone the government will pay €69 million to Steward Healthcare – who took over the concession from VGH – for two out of those three hospitals, a 40% increase compared to 2021.

Naturally the government tried to spin the Opposition’s vote against the health ministry budget on this basis by saying that the PN is against free healthcare.  Such is the attitude of a government which apparently refuses to recognise sheer absurdity of the contract that it has gotten the country into.

But no amount of spin is enough to cover for what this hospitals deal truly is.

We are sure that there is still a lot more about this deal to come out.  But till then, the police must launch its own criminal investigation into it.