It was the government that decided to censor significant parts of the contracts linked to the privatisation of three hospitals, the new operator said.
The company, Vitals Global Healthcare, has taken over the running of the Gozo, St Luke’s and Karin Grech hospitals in a €200 million investment.
Three contracts published by the government on Wednesday are full of deleted clauses and fully blanked out pages.
In reply to questions from this paper, a spokeswoman for the operator said the government, at its discretion, decided to withhold information considered to be commercially sensitive from the published documents.
This included details of the building plans for the new Barts’ medical school, she added.
The three contracts between Vitals and the government were all signed by former health minister Konrad Mizzi. Asked if the redactions happened under the present Health Minister, Chris Fearne, a spokeswoman said the contracts were vetted by the ministry’s legal team prior to publication. Asked if she was referring to Dr Mizzi’s ministry or Mr Fearne’s, the spokeswoman would not specify.
The heavy-handed redactions were criticised by the Medical Association of Malta, which said it would wait until a due diligence process was carried out on Vitals by the Auditor General.
Contacted by this paper, MAM general secretary Martin Balzan pointed out that no one knew who the real owners of Vitals were, because its ownership structure was hidden by companies in the British Virgin Islands. He said that, after the global Panama Papers scandal, the EU was demanding more transparency for such offshore structures.
No one knows the real owners. Vitals’ structure is hidden by companies in the British Virgin Islands
Dr Balzan said that the doctors’ union would be writing to the Public Accounts Committee to request an independent due diligence process be held on the company.
He added that the MAM was not at all happy about the redaction of the contracts.
On one page, three lines seemingly float in isolation, surrounded by a sea of white, where clauses have been blanked out with Tippex. All the key deadlines and figures in the service concession agreement have been deleted. “Construct new medical school, built on an area of approximately [deleted] which will require to house the education of [deleted] students”, is one such example.
The contract shows that Vitals has been bound to deposit a performance guarantee, yet the figure is missing. According to the contract, Vitals will have to construct a new building at the Gozo General Hospital that will house “200 to 250” acute care beds.
It is also contractually obliged to fulfil a number of milestones linked to the plans and renovation of the three hospitals, but the deadlines and the penalty fees for missing them have all been redacted.
Even the details about how often the main hospital corridors have to be painted and how often maintenance and repairs on the facades have to take place have been redacted.