Vitals signs with Dubai construction company for Malta hospitals – but work to be done instead by manufacturer of prefab modular units

Through documents and information uploaded online by Minaean SP Construction Corporation, registered in British Columbia, Canada, but Indian-owned and operated, this website has discovered that Vitals Global Healthcare has negotiated a “formal contract” with an Indian-owned construction corporation based out of Dubai – Shapoorji Pallonji International, for “the construction of a new 200-bed hospital and refurbishing another 210-bed hospital in Malta”.

The documents go on to say that the contract will be “finalised and signed upon confirmation of the financing”. You may wish to read this document: mda-q2-sep-2015

I would say that this explains the very frequent trips made to Dubai by former European Commissioner John Dalli, who was appointed the Prime Minister’s consultant on state hospital management.

This significant new piece of information bears out what this website reported last May on the basis of a leaked due diligence report.

However, despite Vitals signing with Shapoorji Pallonji International, the building of Malta’s new hospital and refurbishment of an existing one will be undertaken by Minaean, a struggling manufacturer of prefabricated modular buildings for the Third World and developing countries. The prefab buildings are used for emergency housing, petrol stations and storage, and they come in three different systems called Vesta Quik-Build (a corrugated wall panel system), Artisan Quik-Build (a steel-framing load-bearing wall panel system), and Modular Quik-Build (factory production and assembly of cladded wall panels).

Minaean had revenue of just $372,214 in 2013, and registered a loss that year of $492,176. Last year, it had revenue of $1,841,609 and made a loss of $228,431. Its total assets were valued at $865,160.

But in December – very obviously timed on the basis of Vitals’s Malta hospital deal, Shapoorji Pallonji International bought 44.55% of the prefab manufacturer Minaean in exchange for settling its $4.38 million debt and effectively saving it from having to declare bankruptcy. Another chunk of Minaean shares was transferred to a Canadian citizen called Fali Vajifdar.

Just days after the share transfer was completed and Minaean’s name changed to Minaean SP Construction Corporation, the company signed a memorandum of understanding, on 31 December, with Vitals Global Healthcare Ltd.

You can read the MOU here: mou_signed_msp_vgh

In the MOU, both Minaean and Vitals describe themselves (and each other) falsely in hyperbolic terms that have no bearing in reality. Minaean, which has annual revenue of only between one and two million dollars a year on which it makes a significant loss, and which struggles to sell prefab modular buildings in Ghana and rural India, is described as “being in the business of infrastructure development, with expertise in civil construction and structural engineering, including but not limited to stadiums and auditoriums, airports, hotels, hospitals, skyscrapers, housing, roads, expressways, power plants, etc”.

This is clearly a reference to its minority shareholder Shapoorji Pallonji International, which is a completely separate operation. In fact, Minaean is being supported by Export Development Canada, a self-financing Crown corporation which provides assistance to START-UPS in the export trade. In this video interview recorded only three months ago, officials of Export Development Canada say that Minaean could not secure traditional financing because of its poor balance sheet, and needed its assistance to get to the next level.

Meanwhile, Vitals Global Healthcare is described as being in the business “of the development and management of world-class healthcare facilities globally, with a strong track record in the healthcare REIT sector” – this when the company was set up just 17 months ago in Malta and has not traded since.

The MOU is “to share their separate areas of expertise to form a consortium/alliance capable of funding, designingShap, building and operating healthcare facilities for future clients” with the stated objective of the alliance being “to secure healthcare facilities overseas on a PPP basis, where (Minaean) provides the design and build expertise and (Vitals) funds and operates healthcare facilities”.