Daphne's 2015 reporting about fraudulent hospital deal vindicated

Today’s judgement rescinding and annulling all three agreements and amendments between the Government of Malta and Vitals Global Healthcare, and later with Steward Health Care, vindicates Daphne Caruana Galizia’s extensive reporting about the fraudulent deal.

On 20, March 2015, Daphne first reported that Malta Government had struck a deal with Oxley Capital Group of Singapore ahead of the call for proposals for the privatisation of three of Malta’s state hospitals, and that representatives of the company, including Ram Tumuluri, had visited Malta two months earlier for meetings.

Daphne reported that “Ram Tumuluri, presenting himself as the face of Oxley Capital, had held meetings with Maltese medical suppliers, at the offices of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the previous January (2015), gave them his card and told them that his company – Oxley (which is owned by Mark Pawley) – already had an agreement with the Maltese government to run the hospitals.

“I knew my information was 100% correct not only because of the cast-iron reliability of the people who were invited to those meetings at PriceWaterhouseCoopers only to be confronted with this disturbing information, but also because, when I texted the government head of communications, Kurt Farrugia, asking him to confirm or deny that the government had reached an agreement with Oxley before the tender was out, he didn’t reply at all. There was a blank wall of silence. He usually replies punctiliously and very politely.

“One point needs to be made now: the government was NOT in talks with Vitals back then quite simply because Vitals did not exist. It was in talks with Oxley as represented by Ram Tumuluri.”

We now expect the authorities to move swiftly against all those implicated in the fraudulent deal, with both criminal prosecutions and civil action to recover stolen funds, and to ensure the return of public assets to the Maltese public.

The original judgement in Maltese has been translated into English thanks to the support of Transparency International.

Update: The judgement was confirmed on appeal on 23 October 2023.