Revel Barker (October 21) refers to the Gozo hospital contract bribery affair.

As it was being built with British money (“Independence parting present”), a British architect was chosen. The matter came to the high court at London’s Old Bailey in the 1980s, wherein the architect was found guilty (and given a prison sentence) of having bribed not only a Maltese minister (Nationalist Party) but also a British one who had to resign.

The names of the architect and the two ministers were published in The Times of London (I was in the British public service at the time).

The case appears to have been hushed up by both major political parties in Malta as Barker describes by his own experience of Malta in the 1980s.