In this email, we will provide more detail about this disinformation campaign, and how our reporting is being received in Malta and the United States. But first, we have an ask 🙇

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Now, here’s how the smear campaign against former Health Minister Chris Fearne played out 👇

🔎 What Leaked Documents Show

🕵️  Why Spy? Emails show that Steward executives saw Fearne as the "main opponent" to their Maltese hospital concession. They became annoyed when government payments were held up in 2018 after he questioned whether the company was providing all the medical services it was contracted to deliver. 

🏢 The Intelligence Firm’s Introduction. In 2021, Steward directed its law firm to hire CT Group, a London-based intelligence firm. 

⚙️ The Manufactured Allegation. In 2022, CT Group created a report alleging that Fearne had taken a large bribe.

The report laid out the case that Fearne had used his position to lobby for the issuance of a Maltese passport to the brother of a longstanding adviser to Vladimir Putin. It included what appears to be a bank record of a payment to an account held by the daughter of Fearne’s former chief of staff.

But the record was not authentic. Alex Cobham, chief executive of the U.K.-based NGO Tax Justice Network, reviewed the document for OCCRP and called it a “clumsy and inexpert” fake.