BREAKING: Criminal charges filed in connection with hospitals inquiry
Criminal charges have been filed in court against a number of people named in the hospitals inquiry by the inquiring magistrate, according to Repubblika’s Robert Aquilina and their lawyer Jason Azzopardi.Azzopardi particularly wrote on social m
Criminal charges have been filed in court against a number of people named in the hospitals inquiry by the inquiring magistrate, according to Repubblika’s Robert Aquilina and their lawyer Jason Azzopardi.
Azzopardi particularly wrote on social media that criminal charges have been filed against former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his then chief of staff Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi.
The former PN MP who is also Repubblika’s lawyer said that charges had been presented against “a large group of people.” “A new chapter for Malta is being written,” he said.
He later wrote that Central Bank governor Edward Scicluna is among those charged with “serious charges which carry with them years of imprisonment.”
It is understood that a total of 19 people are set to be arraigned by summons in connection with the inquiry.
The charges are being filed on the back of a now-concluded magisterial inquiry into the concession which sold three government hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare – a concession which later passed on to Steward Health Care and was last year declared as being fraudulent by a court and subsequently annulled.
The inquiry was opened at Repubblika’s request in 2019, and was finalised last week, with Prime Minister Robert Abela going in all-out attack mode against the inquiring magistrate Gabriella Vella, saying that she had politicised the inquiry by supposedly purposely timing its conclusion with the start of the electoral campaign.
Muscat meanwhile has for the past year mounted a legal campaign for the inquiring magistrate – Gabriella Vella – to be removed from the case, claiming that she was biased against him particularly as her father and brother had commented about the same hospitals deal themselves.
"I'm assuming I'm going to be charged with something," Muscat told a press conference earlier this week. "Bring it on. I am bracing myself for it and I will fight it to win it."
"I am serene because I know what I did and didn't do, and I have no doubt time will prove me right and I have no problem with being fairly scrutinised. If there is justice in this country, I will be acquitted,” he had said.
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