Private hospital owner joins Michelle Muscat’s NGO amid mounting conflict concerns

The appointment of a private hospital director and owner to the board of an NGO chaired by Michelle Muscat has intensified concerns within the Health Ministry over conflicts of interest and the continued entrenchment of politically connected networks in Malta’s healthcare and civil society sectors.

Kristen Buhagiar, one of the owners of St Thomas Hospital in Qormi and the daughter of former Labour junior minister Louis Buhagiar, has been appointed to the board of the National Alliance for Rare Diseases Support. Health Ministry sources told The Shift that Buhagiar replaced Professor Alex Felice, the respected geneticist and rare disease advocate who died last year.

The Alliance is presided over by Michelle Muscat, wife of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat, who was forced to resign in 2020 amid widespread corruption scandals and the fallout from the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

While the Alliance does not itself provide clinical services, it plays an influential advocacy role and regularly engages directly with government ministries, regulators, and senior officials.

Senior ministry officials told The Shift that Buhagiar’s appointment, a doctor by profession specialising in Botox,  has raised red flags due to her direct commercial interests. St Thomas Hospital is a major private healthcare provider that routinely negotiates with the government and bids for multi-million-euro public contracts.

“This creates an obvious perception problem,” one senior official said.

“You have a private operator dealing with the government sitting on the board of an NGO chaired by one of the most politically exposed figures in the country.”

Personal and political overlaps further compound concerns.

The wife of Parliamentary Secretary for Health Malcolm Agius Galea is a practitioner at St Thomas Hospital, deepening unease about the increasingly blurred lines between public office, private healthcare, and politically connected NGOs.

Michelle Muscat has retained significant, though waning, public influence through her NGO activities, most notably the Marigold Foundation.

The Shift has already reported on the foundation’s opaque governance, lack of meaningful financial transparency, and its privileged access to public institutions, including funds from Bank of Valletta, during Joseph Muscat’s time in office.

Investigations revealed how Marigold events were regularly hosted at state-owned venues, enjoyed sponsorships from entities linked to government, and benefited from visibility and resources unavailable to other civil society organisations.

During the years, Marigold functioned as a quasi-official platform closely aligned to Muscat’s faction with Labour.

While no irregularity has been alleged in Buhagiar’s appointment, ministry sources warned that the accumulation of political proximity, private commercial interests, and NGO advocacy may constitute a significant conflict and continue to erode public trust.