Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1493026
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 MARCH 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 FEBRUARY 2023 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Right of reply: Steward International WITH reference to the article pub- lished on the front page, and pages 8 and 9 of MaltaToday on Sunday 12 February 2023 and on MaltaToday.com. mt on 13 February 2023 titled 'Opaque Steward ownership distances Amer- icans from Malta fall-out', Steward Health Care International (SHCI) and Steward Health Care Malta (SHCM) want to clarify the merits of the facts and arguments made in the article in question, through this reply. MaltaToday, working in collusion with a short seller, has maliciously and deliberately reported false information about the company as port of a long- term and continuous smear campaign. Steward Health Care International will defend its actions, standing up for patient safety and protecting the pub- lic's confidence in Malta's health care system. Steward Health Care International (SHCI), alongside its subsidiary Steward Health Care Malta (SHCM), has today written to the Government of Malta seeking an investigation into Matthew Vella, Malta Today and their inves- tigative partner, short-seller Viceroy Research LLC, for persistent and ma- licious inaccurate reporting about the company. SHCI believes that the criminal in- tent of this smear campaign on SHCI is to manipulate and drive down the stock price of Medical Properties Trust (MPT) Inc, a NYSE-listed real estate investment trust, in a coordinated cam- paign akin to securities fraud. SHCI will be taking appropriate legal action to support its position. SHCI forcefully disputes the lat- est inaccurate article by MaltaToday published on 12 February 2023. SHCI believes that the news outlet knowingly published a series of false and mislead- ing claims about the company's struc- ture and mischaracterised corporate links between SHCI and MPT. The veracity of these claims was easi- ly verifiable. Indeed, when approached, SHCI plainly and forcefully denied the portrayal of the links between the companies. The depiction of the ties to MPT in the article is completely inaccu- rate — a fact already pointed out to the same journalist and publication over a year ago. The author nevertheless made no at- tempt to justify his position and instead persisted in the publication of these false claims, choosing instead to rely on biased, unfounded and untrue informa- tion previously published by Viceroy in a report to which the author had previously contributed. The claims in the article are plainly and malevolently intended to secure some benefit far the author, the outlet and Viceroy, as well as damage SHCI's standing in Malta and abroad. The article also positions Steward Health Care Malta (SHCMI's oper- ations in Malta — operations with a modest revenue that over its lifetime to date has produced cumulative losses of many millions of Euros and that are run to a tight and heavily scrutinised budget — as the hub for an internation- al money laundering conspiracy. This is plainly ridiculous and is insulting to the professionals in Malta that manage the operation to a very high standard. Such false allegations undermine the public's confidence in Malta's health care system and intentionally interfere with the company's ability — both in Malta and internationally — to improve patient access to quality healthcare across the communities we serve. SHCI reserves its rights to pursue all legal options available to it in response to such allegations. Nuria Ros Domingo Secretary of the Board of Directors, Steward Health Care International S.L.U. Editorial Note: Matthew Vella has denied these claims, which are intended at tar- nishing his reputation with malicious suggestions of wrongdoing. This is a case of first-class bullying and an attack on the liberty of the Maltese press to report freely the critics of Steward. This is very worrying. Yet again we have a clear example of private inter- ests in Malta who are using their legal muscle and leverage with the govern- ment to cow the Maltese press into submission. That a company whose operations are financed by the Maltese taxpayer, demands an EU government 'in- vestigate' a journalist for reporting allegations about its ownership on the internet and social media, is not unheard of. But such aggression is still flabbergasting in the 21st century. In this climate, the Maltese press is not safe from belligerence of such com- panies. MaltaToday has reported faithfully SCHI's comments. This newspaper is within its rights to come to its conclu- sion that research on SCHI's parent companies and the Delaware compa- nies, suggest that it wants to create as much distance as possible from Stew- ard Systems in America due to the ongoing court case in Malta.