Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech said that the latest NAO report into the Steward hospitals deal is “another confirmation” that the Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela government are one and the same with those who defrauded the country.

Grech was speaking during a press conference in reaction to the third NAO report into the hospitals deal, which was published on Monday.

The National Audit Office (NAO) was requested by the Public Accounts Committee to audit the concession awarded by the Government to Vitals Global Healthcare Ltd (VGH) in relation to the Gozo General Hospital, Saint Luke’s Hospital and Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital.

In its final audit the NAO showed how Konrad Mizzi “engineered” the side agreement which would have seen Steward receive €100 million if the hospitals concession was terminated by “misleading Cabinet.”

Grech said that the government wanted the audit to be discussed in Parliament on Monday itself, but that the PN had asked for it to be discussed on Tuesday so that the 450-page report can be studied in detail.

However, Grech said, “instead of facing journalists,” Prime Minister Robert Abela chose to discuss the topic in Parliament, “so that no one can insist otherwise.”

He added that although this deal might be considered a huge scandal for the average person, for Abela it is not as “he is still defending it.”

On the details within the NAO’s report, Grech said that Abela lied when he said that it was false that Steward’s payment was not of €400 million as that figure also included the payment of wages from 2015 onwards.

The NAO said in fact that between 2016 and 2021, the Government paid the Concessionaire €268,600,000, with €52,700,000 paid to the VGH and €214,900,000 to Steward. Salaries of resources made available to the Concessionaire by the Government during this period accounted for a further disbursement of €188,500,000.

Therefore, the total cost incurred by the Government with respect to the Hospitals between June 2016 and end 2021 was €456,000,000 – but this is not including the payments for 2022 and 2023.

On the transfer from one Vitals Steward healthcare to Steward Healthcare, details from the audit show how the government could have asked for a laudemium, “however it did not, as instead of choosing the people the government continued choosing [Steward and Vitals]”

In light of this latest report, Grech reminded of how the PN last week presented a criminal complaint for the police to investigate all the details that emerged in court in connection with the hospitals case after the concession was annulled some months ago.

PN’s Deputy Leader Alex Perici Calascione, in quoting the report spoke of how the government chose an “unorthodox dynamic” to run the concession.

In explaining what this meant he said that the government “left every established negotiation and consideration on how to deal with public funds and adopted their own method that was beneficial only for those benefitting from the deal.”

He pointed out that other sections mention the shortcomings in how the “government totally failed to see where there were obvious contractual infringements and did not take any action to remedy them.”

On his part, PN MP Adrian Delia spoke of how it was the Prime Minister himself who a few days ago said that he was going to write to the Auditor General to ask him to investigate “where the millions went, because the government does not know.”

However “now it is surreal that in Parliament Abela is saying that the audit report is saying he’s right.”

Delia went on to quote some to the phrases which the Auditor General used to describe the conclusions he drew, such as “into the abyss”, “a rude awakening” and “in negotiating the unnegotiable”, “of hopeless endings” to show the gravity of the report.

However “the prime minister is saying that he is happy with this report,” Delia said.

In answering media questions on the Police commissioner Angelo Gafa’s lack of reaction, Grech said that “it is evident” that he is part of the pact done “with Joseph Muscat for the investigations not to happen and for no further action to be taken.”

He added that in light of this the PN is going to keep putting pressure on the institutions “because that is our duty.”

“We are not going to let Robert Abela escape from his responsibility,” he said.