Manuel Mallia is worth millions and won’t pay his then girlfriend’s 2,000-euro hospital bill

“Her husband is Maltese even though she was not a Maltese citizen at the time”. The essential point here is that he was not her husband at the time, which is why she was not entitled to free healthcare in Malta. They married in 2012. This hospital bill dates back to 2008 and those two qammelin are still fighting over it almost seven years later.

The fact that a non-Maltese woman has given birth to a Maltese man’s children does not entitle her to free healthcare or any other social services. If her children are born Maltese that means it is her children who are entitled to free healthcare and not their mother, and that’s through their father and nothing to do with her.

The most shocking thing about this is that Manuel Mallia did not send his girlfriend to St James Hospital or to a private clinic (I say ‘send’ because clearly she did not have any money of her own and the choice was not hers) but to the state general hospital, trying to get for free something to which he was not entitled and for which he could easily afford to pay.

Even the fact that they are quibbling about this 2000-euro bill is disturbing. This is a man who is worth millions according to his own declaration of assets to parliament, including half a million in cash under the mattress.

More to the point, he is a member of parliament and should lead by example. While much of this was going on, he was actually a cabinet minister.

The whole thing is really sordid when you think about it. A married man of around 60, who is estranged from his wife and who is worth millions because of his activities around the business of criminal law, has a Romanian girlfriend 30 years his junior who gives birth to twins fathered by him.

She gives birth at the state hospital even though she is a Romanian citizen who is not covered for free healthcare in Malta. This is because she has no money of her own and her elderly millionaire boyfriend is too mean to pay for private healthcare even though he can more than afford it and these are the first and only children he has ever had, arriving in his old age.

Her boyfriend tells her that she will not have to pay because he is Maltese, even though they are not married. She believes him. He thinks he can get away with it.

She receives a bill for 2,221 euros and can’t pay it because she doesn’t work, has no money of her own and, as the Romanian maid who escaped and then contacted this website explained, the household is kept on a Scrooge-level shoestring, with that maid even sent to the public fountain at the Mainguard to fill jerry-cans with water to wash the floors and clothes.

The Department of Health chases the Romanian woman for the money and ends up suing then obtaining a garnishee order against her. Meanwhile, the elderly millionaire divorces his wife under the new divorce legislation (she has since died) and, three-and-half years after the birth of their children and the issuing of that hospital bill, marries the Romanian girlfriend.

He campaigns with the Labour Party, stands for the general election on the Labour Party ticket and becomes a cabinet minister even while the Department of Health is chasing his now wife for just over two thousand euros which he refuses to pay even despite his new position as a member of the government.

On the contrary, the cabinet minister and his wife take the battle to a whole new level, arguing pathetically that two letters were swapped round in her name – Corduta instead of Codruta – in the legal documents which means IT WASN’T HER BUT ANOTHER PERSON.

This is the stuff of which Joseph Muscat’s cabinet was made. You just have to wonder what levels of deprivation Miss Codruta Cristian came from in Romania that she is prepared to put up with somebody 30 years her senior who is so ugly and so stingy and still think of it as her salvation.