Steward Health Care top executive forced to face US Senate

Ralph de la Torre, the CEO of bankrupt Steward Health Care, will be forced to face a US Congress grilling in September following the Health Committee’s decision to launch an investigation into the conglomerate’s failure and claimed corruption.

De la Torre, also listed among the names to face charges in Malta related to the hospitals’ fraudulent deal with disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat and his government, will face tough questions after US lawmakers decided to issue a subpoena against him.

US Senate members voted 20-1 to authorise the investigation and 16-4 to authorise the subpoena.

Subpoenas – a type of forced summons – are rare and only used when necessary and when all other efforts to interrogate an interested party fail.

For years, De la Torre has faced accusations that he has personally profited while Steward’s hospitals across the US and in Malta failed financially.

Before the Senate’s vote, Health Committee Chair Bernie Sanders showed pictures of De la Torre’s €37 million yacht, €14 million luxury fishing boat and the company’s two corporate jets.

“It is time for de la Torre to get off his yacht and explain to Congress the financial chicanery which made him extremely wealthy, while the hospitals he managed went bankrupt.”

“It is time for Congress to hold de la Torre accountable for his extreme greed,” Sanders insisted.

In the US, Steward took over a failing hospital system run by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2010 and, backed by private entity Cerberus Capital Management, converted it into a for-profit institution before buying up hospitals across the US.

It is claimed that Cerberus siphoned money from the hospitals and then sold all the land to a real estate investment company for more than €1 billion. The company agreed to lease them back for millions in rent each year. Steward used the money from the deal to finance more expansion, including in Malta, allegedly without investing in its hospitals.

Steward filed for bankruptcy in the US earlier this year.

In Malta, Steward took over the 30-year concession of three public hospitals from the failed Vitals Global Healthcare in what the then-deputy prime minister Chris Fearne had described as “the real deal”.

It later emerged that this was a kind of insider dealing as Armin Ernst, the then CEO of VGH, with the help of Labour government top officials, including disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his deputy Chris Fearne, former minister Konrad Mizzi and former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, among others, arranged for the transfer and the payment of millions from taxpayer funds every year.

In Malta, Steward did not meet its contractual obligations, yet it was negotiating the payment of more millions with Prime Minister Robert Abela.

The second deal with Steward was dropped only at the eleventh hour when the State Advocate told Prime Minister Robert Abela that what he was proposing was illegal.