Activist group Moviment Graffiti is appealing for the “immediate criminal prosecution of Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi as masterminds of fraudulent Vitals and Steward deal.”

In a statement the organisation said that following the Court’s decision today to render Labour government’s 2014 deal with Vitals and Steward Healthcare “null and fraudulent,” it called for the “immediate, full and clear criminal prosecution of top cabinet members involved in masterminding this deal.”

“We call for immediate criminal prosecution of then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat as head of cabinet who ratified the concession, then Health Minister Konrad Mizzi who masterminded the deal, then Economy Minister Chris Cardona who signed the Memorandum of Understanding and then Chief of Staff Keith Schembri who was involved in the secret negotiations,” the organisation said.

It went on to say that “Justice Depasquale today made clear that any attempt at shifting responsibility from individuals directly responsible for the fraudulent Vitals and Steward Healthcare concession to the whole cabinet would constitute a dangerous, manipulative and deceitful act.”

In light of this, Moviment Graffitti insisted on the “immediate, full and clear criminal prosecution of Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi, Chris Cardona and Keith Schembri as representatives of the government of Malta in 2014.”

It also called on the current Labour government to put an “immediate halt to any further leakage of taxpayers’ money into the Vitals and Steward Healthcare fraudulent deal. All taxpayers of Malta and Gozo have to date been made to pay millions for a privatisation deal that gave them nothing but damage back and that constitutes an unprecedented act of public theft of major hospitals on the islands for the benefit of the corrupt few.”

“We call on Prime Minister Robert Abela to ensure that the exit penalty that binds government to pay further millions to Vitals and then Steward Healthcare from taxpayers’ pockets is rendered null,” Graffitti said.

It added that “we also call on Prime Minister Robert Abela to ensure that taxpayers of Malta and Gozo recuperate the millions that they were robbed of and that were thrown away in this fraudulent concession. This must be done through the payment of damages by all political and private individuals involved.”

The Court’s decision today proved that the Vitals and Steward Healthcare concession was nothing but a “national privatisation scheme turned cash cow by the Labour government for the benefit of an inner circle of powerful members and of powerful private companies in cahoots with the political class,” said Graffitti.

“We call for the immediate return to the public and the immediate rehabilitation of Gozo General Hospital, St Luke’s Hospital and Karin Grech Hospital,” the organisation said.

File photo: Gozo News/Anthony Zammit

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