LIVE: Chris Cardona expected to testify as Muscat Vitals case continues
The compilation of evidence against former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his ex-top aide Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi continues in court today, with former economy minister Chris Cardona expected to be among the witnesses.Muscat
The compilation of evidence against former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his ex-top aide Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi continues in court today, with former economy minister Chris Cardona expected to be among the witnesses.
Muscat, as well as former minister Konrad Mizzi, face charges of accepting bribes and corruption, while Keith Schembri, who was Joseph Muscat's Chief of Staff when he was prime minister, will face charges relating to the solicitation of bribes and abuse of office.
Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna and Karl Cini, lawyer David Meli, IT manager Clarence John Conger-Thompson, auditor Christopher Spiteri, Jonathan Vella, Ivan Vassallo, Mario Gatt, Jonathan Bondin and former Allied Newspapers CEO Adrian Hillmann together with Pierre Sladden are also facing charges.
The last sitting took place on 8 August, with National Audit Office Auditor General Charles Deguara being the main witness of the day.
He testified that former Minister Konrad Mizzi signed every contract related to the Vitals hospitals concession, save for the emphyteusis on the land, and also expanded on the concerns about the deal which the NAO had when it wrote three reports on it.
Magistrate Rachel Montebello is hearing the case.
10:28: Cardona says that the memorandum was one of an amount of memoranda which he would sign as Economy Minister. He says that he only put his signature on the memorandum, but recalls that Malta Enterprise – which was under his remit – and one of their clients was Barts.
He says that the idea of this MoU was for a business plan to be presented which was pegged to a set of deliverables.
Malta Enterprise, which was led by Mario Galea at the time, had simply approached him to sign the MoU.
“A lot of memoranda are signed but they do not go any further, like this one,” Cardona tells the magistrate, and adds that he has a whole list of memoranda that he had signed as economy minister which he can present.
“The memorandum wasn’t renewed – if I’m not mistaken, it was withdrawn by Malta Enterprise because after discussions it showed that it did not lead to what the government wanted,” he says.
Cardona explains that the MoU, for instance, only related to Gozo and therefore did not include anything about St Luke’s Hospital – which is not the direction the government wanted to go in.
10:23: Former Economy Minister Chris Cardona is the first witness of the day.
Cardona served as Economy Minister between 2013 and 2020, which was when he resigned from Parliament in the midst of arrests made in connection with the Daphne Caruana Galizia.
He had signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the government and a company owned by the same people behind Vitals Global Healthcare in 2014 before the same company won the hospitals deal.
The NAO had said that the fact that the government had signed an MoU on the hospitals deal prior to the issuing of the tender should have disqualified Vitals from the procurement proceedings.
Cardona says he has been summoned to testify specifically about this MoU, and asks to see a copy of the document as he takes the witness stand.
10:21: Magistrate Rachel Montebello has entered the court room and we can get underway.
10:12: Good morning and thank you for tuning in - the court sitting hasn't started yet, but the cast have taken their places, so it will only be a matter of minutes.
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