Muscat: defrauder or defrauded? – Jacques René Zammit

It’s been a busy few days for disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat. Back from the motherland in Baku, he had a trip to the law courts where he has been forced on a defensive footing in a libel case that he had started.

His visit to the capital meant journalists could do some doorstepping and ask some vital questions, pardon the pun, concerning the Hospital Concession scandal that had happened on his watch.

Muscat made it a point to stress that the “government was the victim of the fraud”. “His government” he would hastily add. His cabinet of movers and shakers had stumbled upon a shady bunch who ended up turning a flagship project into a fraudulent activity to the detriment of the country.

Eyebrows firmly knotted together, jaw raised in slight indignation and a wry, condescending smile, Muscat would repeat – the government was the victim.

Now let’s put it this way. Imagine this was a football club. The new manager entrusted with the running of the team meets a man in a bar claiming to be an agent. He takes a liking to the agent. With no background checks at all, he convinces the club to sign a multi-million-euro contract for an unknown player represented by this agent. The contract is full of bonuses linked to simple appearances on the bench, and lots of added perks including a huge severance pay-out.

Imagine this player fails to perform. It turns out that this was not a player at all. Just a friend of the supposed agent, in on the scam. His situation is air-tight, including the severance pay-out running into the millions. The club has been scammed. Defrauded. Screwed. No two ways about it. In an interview with journalists, the manager will claim the club was the victim of fraud. A sad day for the club.

I guess that you can see where I am going with this. The barefaced cheek of Muscat in repeating the mantra of a government defrauded is better appreciated in this light.

The Vitals’ judgement could not have been any clearer about the fact that the fraudulent activity was the result of concerted behaviour. Concerted behaviour between the Vitals and the administration at the time of the concession. While the auditor general had highlighted ‘mismanagement of government resources’, the judgment goes so far as to specify that governmental representatives on the deal were inept, amateurish and disingenuous.

When a judge points out that the Memorandum of Understanding provided sufficient insider information for Vitals that it made the granting of the contract a foregone conclusion, Vitals is not alone in ‘defrauding the government’. The collusion from the inside means the government was also being defrauded by some of its own. Or, to put it more precisely, and logically, those entrusted with the government and management of the nation were busy screwing it instead.

Judge Francesco Depasquale called the granting of the contract a “fraudulently contrived process”. It is a process that requires not only Vitals but also the active participation of people in government. At the head of that government, actively promoting the flagship project was disgraced former PM Muscat. When the alarm bells started ringing, Muscat did nothing but defend the project.

Ask yourself the question. Does that make Muscat a part of those being defrauded or of the defrauders?