If you had to partner with someone on a business venture, I imagine you’d want…
Pull the other one
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If you had to partner with someone on a business venture, I imagine you’d want to know whether they’ve got everything in order, no?
If you answered ‘yes’ to that question, you should know that apparently, the Maltese government does not agree.
Today, we were in court for a hearing in the case of the Republic of Malta against disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and his former associates and colleagues.
Remember that around a month and a half ago, magistrate Rachel Montebello had formally declared that there is enough prima facie evidence to move onto the compilation of evidence stage, which is where we are today.
Yet again, the most important witness we heard today was auditor general Charles Deguara, who, in less than an hour, reminded us precisely what had led his office to effectively condemn the way this concession was orchestrated.
You may be wondering why it is important for us to repeat facts which have been established already – a brief side note here.
Apart from the fact that this is just a part of the court’s process, a part of the way in which the government manages to make people forget about every scandal is burying each and every one in even more scandals that come out the next day.
We must also consider that this concession only occurred thanks to a group of individuals who were working together so that something that would not normally happen would, in fact, happen.
In a situation like this one, which is certainly not normali, remembering the facts is crucial.
So, what did the auditor general remind us of?
He reminded us of the fact that Vitals Global Healthcare were such a dubious outfit that it took them more than five years to publish their accounts, only for us to then discover that they were practically insolvent and that their projected income from “medical tourism” was effectively a fairytale.
He reminded us of how, in every instance in which the government could have stuck up for the rights of the Maltese, they simply changed the conditions in Vitals’ favour instead.
He reminded us of how this whole affair was so rigged against us that our own government, in total secrecy, signed an agreement with VGH before issuing the tender publicly.
And last but not least, the auditor general reminded us that the person who signed every agreement on behalf of the government was none other than Konrad Mizzi, who has brought us so many excuses for his behaviour that he once even had to resort to telling us that he had found God.
Obviously, those are not the words of the auditor generali, who was far more diplomatic.
We are only passing on what we learned from years of experience in which we’ve grown tired of hearing lies from a government that doesn’t have as much as an inch of wriggle room left.
We are somehow expected to believe that nobody in the government noticed something was wrong with all this. That the government is the entity that was subject to fraud, and not the population they are meant to represent.
Pull the other one, won’t you?
Read today’s Live Blog
Next Live Blog: Wednesday, 21 August, 10:00
