Some days back I published an opinion piece entitled ‘Silent Witness’ in which I poised a number of questions to Finance Minister Edward Scicluna with regards to the scandalous Vitals deal. Scicluna took offence to what I wrote.
Standing up in Parliament he said the article was politically dishonest. I invited him repeatedly to answer at least one of the questions I put across in the article. He did not.
So, I took the issue one step further. I tabled 12 parliamentary questions to help shed light on the Ministry of Finance and the minister’s involvement or otherwise in this sorry saga.
You might ask why Scicluna’s role in this deal is worth highlighting?
The Minister of Finance is responsible for raising taxes and ensuring that our taxes are spent by the government judiciously.
The proverbial buck stops at him. Vitals received between €50 to €100 million of our taxes in less than two years with nothing to show for it. €50 million and more of our tax money went missing as the Minister of Finance looked the other way.
According to media reports, Vitals received millions of euros worth of medical equipment for which they reportedly paid just one euro. The Minister of Finance is ultimately responsible for protecting the assets of the people. He stayed mum on this point too.
The Minister of Finance is responsible for public procurement and contracting.
The Vitals deal was described by an expert as a one-sided deal that did little to protect the interests of the government and everything to favour Vitals.
I asked him if he had any comment to make on this. His reply was that his ministry was not involved in the negotiations with Vitals. The Minister of Finance is also in part responsible for public private partnerships (PPP). This scandalous deal was sold to the Maltese public as a shining example of a PPP.
This PPP turned out to a planned fiasco, a scam, yet the Minister of Finance did not feel he owes the public an explanation.
The replies he gave to my 12 parliamentary questions were regrettably evasive, aimed at obscuring the facts rather than at providing clear information. By taking this route, the Minister of Finance is no longer a silent witness. He is by his inaction aiding and abetting the scoundrels who profited from this deal at the expense of the Maltese taxpayer.
Scicluna went through hoops to avoid answering simple questions.
Edward Scicluna’s reluctance to stand up and be counted in this matter is not an act of political courage but regrettably an act of political cowardice
I asked him if he was aware that a memorandum of understanding was signed with Vitals before the bidding process was concluded. A simple yes or no answer would have sufficed. Instead, he asked me to direct my question to another minister. Is Scicluna not capable of answering such a simple question? Did he or did he not know?
Why should I ask another minister whether Scicluna was aware of the signed MOU? I asked him if he knew or if he was made aware as to who were the ultimate beneficial owners of Vitals? Again a simple yes or no answer would have been enough. He asked me to put my question to another minister.
I asked him if the Ministry of Finance was involved or if it carried out a due diligence on Vitals. His reply was a neither here nor there. So again I challenge the minister to state clearly whether his ministry was involved in the due diligence on Vitals. I will go one step further and invite him to publish this due diligence.
I asked him whether the Ministry of Finance’s approval was being sought before payments were made to Vitals.
He replied that I should direct my question to the minister responsible. Isn’t the Minister of Finance responsible for the Ministry of Finance? It seems not.
Scicluna is clearly not at ease with how things went along in this scandalous Vitals deal. If he is not at ease, then we should all be very worried. From all the people that sit around the Cabinet table, Scicluna is the savviest on business and financial matters.
He knows what is at stake. His silence in this case however is not golden.
His reluctance to stand up and be counted in this matter is not an act of political courage but regrettably an act of political cowardice.
I do not enjoy writing or making such statements. I have always respected Scicluna. Which is why I expected more out of him following this latest in a series of scandals that are now the hallmark of the Muscat government.
Scicluna has a choice to make. He can stand up in Parliament again and take umbrage at what I wrote. Or he can stand up and be counted. If he wants to clear his name and distance himself from the Konrad Mizzis of this government, then he should not simply pass the proverbial buck to Mizzi.
Scicluna should start off by providing clear and unequivocal answers to the questions being asked by the Opposition and the independent media. He can no longer play the part of an innocent bystander. In this deal there are no innocent bystanders.
There are only protagonists and victims.
The PN Opposition asked the Auditor General to investigate this deal. We asked the court to intervene and protect the public.
We are doing whatever we legally can to stop this daylight robbery. We want the truth to come out. The public deserves no less.
Mario de Marco is a Nationalist Party MP.