Occupy Justice activists made a bold statement yesterday evening when they hung a money bag on a Judas tree outside Castille, depicting the sum of €400 million stolen from Maltese citizens in the government’s fraudulent deal with Vitals/Steward.
The activists sought to highlight the unforgivable betrayal of those who signed the contract to sell the country’s hospitals to third parties with no healthcare management experience. The deal was a corrupt one that sold Malta’s prized healthcare system for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver.
A landmark court judgment by Judge Francesco Depasquale on 24 February starkly outlined how the Vitals/Steward deal was fraudulent before it was even signed. However, during its implementation, the Maltese government paid almost €400 million to the company to run the hospitals, and barely a cent of the promised €200 million investment was spent, according to the statement made by the activists.
The hospitals deal is just one of the many scandals exposed by assassinated investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who first drew attention to the suspicious agreement in March 2015. More than a month after the court judgment, no one has resigned, let alone been charged with corruption, as the activists pointed out.
Occupy Justice continues to demand answers from the authorities as to why the people in government behind this fraudulent deal have not been held accountable for their actions. The activists claim that this is just another strand in the web of corruption that started in Castille under Joseph Muscat’s leadership and continues to this day.
They demand good governance to restore Malta’s once-good reputation after years of corruption. “This is our nation, this is our home, and we are the people. We expect better. We deserve better. We demand better,” they said.
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