Tista' taqra bil-Malti.
Disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat is at the heart of a sprawling corruption scandal, with new evidence uncovered by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Times of Malta revealing how millions of euros flowed from a bankrupt US healthcare company to a Swiss firm that paid him after he left office.
Muscat, who resigned as prime minister in January 2020 amid mass protests over the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, was charged last month along with over two dozen others in relation to the fraudulent multi-billion-euro hospital privatisation deal. All have pleaded not guilty.
The joint investigation shows that just over a week after Muscat’s resignation, on 22 January, 2020, he signed a lucrative consultancy contract with Spring X Media AG, a company owned by Pakistani lawyer Wasay Bhatti.
The company, linked to another Swiss firm called Accutor AG, also owned by Bhatti, promised to pay Muscat €15,000 per month for 36 months.
Bank records reveal that at least two of these payments to Muscat came directly from Accutor, a company that had been receiving millions in payments from Steward Health Care, the US firm that took over Malta’s hospital privatisation contract in 2018.
The payments to Muscat were halted in June 2020 after banks flagged them as suspicious. Concurrently, leaked emails show that Steward sent Accutor €400,000 from its Bank of America account, described internally as an “Ali wire” to cover five months of consultancy payments to a Pakistani businessman, Shaukat Ali, and his son.
A four-year magisterial inquiry that concluded in April alleged that Steward had used Accutor to set up a “political support fund” and “used monies diverted from the concession to fund payments to, or on behalf of” Muscat, his former chief of staff Keith Schembri, and former minister Konrad Mizzi. Both Schembri and Mizzi also signed consultancy contracts linked to Accutor in 2020.
“The probability of all three politicians forming independent relationships with the same foreign group of companies over the same timeframe without there being a common association, is considered so negligible that we exclude the possibility,” the inquiry stated.
Muscat has previously claimed that the payments were for legitimate consultancy work unrelated to the hospital contract. When approached by reporters, he declined to comment on the specific allegations, citing an inexistent court gag order, but stated, “I deny the veracity of the claims you quote, and this will be demonstrated in court in due course during the proceedings.”
The investigation further revealed that the Steward payments to Accutor overlapped with the dates and amounts of eight payments that the criminal inquiry said went to the “political support fund” for Muscat and the other officials. These payments “were also funded directly from money paid to Steward by [the Government of Malta] for the operations of the Maltese hospitals and overlap with the payments to Joseph Muscat,” according to the inquiry.
Top executives at Steward, including CEO Ralph De La Torre and international CEO Armin Ernst, personally signed off on many of the payments to Accutor, which totalled roughly €7.6 million between 2018 and 2020. The payments were often listed under vague descriptions such as “political consultancy” or even disguised as expenses for company jets.
While Steward has denied any wrongdoing, stating it “entered Malta in good faith,” the company’s internal correspondence suggests growing concern about the payments. In a 2022 email, two years after terminating the consultancy contract with Accutor, Ernst wrote, “I have to assume that at some point we will have to account for them in detail.”
The scandal surrounding Muscat and Malta’s hospital privatization deal has also cast a harsh spotlight on Steward Health Care’s broader operations and business practices. I
n the United States, Steward faces an existential crisis, mired in a high-profile bankruptcy case, numerous state and federal investigations, and a corporate meltdown that has put all eight of its Massachusetts hospitals at risk. While Muscat has proclaimed his innocence and denounced the inquiry as political persecution, he has also deflected blame onto Steward officials, stating simply, “They did not deliver.”
The leaked emails obtained by OCCRP, shared with the Times of Malta and The Boston Globe, provide a critical window into the business practices of the third-largest hospital system in Massachusetts. They reveal questionable accounting practices, little corporate attention to due diligence, and executives cutting corners on an aggressive path to profit.
The evidence suggests that Steward’s domestic operations are not as divorced from its international ventures as the company has repeatedly claimed. Central to these revelations is Shaukat Ali, a Pakistani businessman described in the emails as “exceedingly well connected.”
Ali, who reportedly has ties to the former Gaddafi regime in Libya, was promised a monthly fee of 80,000 euros and equity opportunities in Steward Health Care International, according to emails from Armin Ernst. “Ralph [de la Torre] and I shook hands with the 2 major principles: Father and son Ali. We assured each other that we are in this together and that we will take care of each other,” Ernst wrote, underscoring the intertwined nature of the business relationships.
The Maltese criminal inquiry didn’t mince words: “The emails confirm that top-ranking officers within Steward were aware that the payments were being made for political purposes rather than consulting services.”
