A perfect Kesslata

The OLAF report is published today in our pages. Read it thoroughly - and soberly. Please remember, and this very important, that the report - not OLAF's but the Kessler one - is selective. It does not provide all the evidence it gathered. The positive evidence that could have helped Dalli was conveniently not reproduced.

When, for example, Dalli's and Frank Zammit's computers were raided, we are not told why no incriminating evidence was found. We are simply told they were raided.

Very, very nice.

When Kessler and his sidekicks, Head of Unit Romera and Investigator Jaretoft, incredibly but truly interviewed the same tobacco representatives and lobbyists, they lumped them all together (see Table 1). They must have based their interrogation techniques on Inspector Clouseau's manual How to Screw up Your Investigation.

But if proof was needed that OLAF, the EU and the tobacco industry were in on the Dalli decapitation together, the most shocking revelation is that Swedish Match had the OLAF report in its hands.

In one recording, director of public affairs at Swedish Match Johan Gabrielsson told Green MEP José Bové, and I quote: "They were aware of that before... it's in the report. It's in the report that there was one meeting." Gabrielsson was referring to the fact that there was only one meeting with John Dalli and not two. Gabrielsson did not realise that he was revealing that Swedish Match had a copy of the OLAF report.

If you have the time, also read through all the reports that have been published since the day John Dalli was forced to resign.

Let me take you all back to October 17.

PBS's TV host Lou Bondi, Gonzi's gatekeeper and ass-licker, sped off to Brussels to attend a press conference on the OLAF report. We are led to believe that Bondi reacted in record time. Bullshit: the only way he could have organised himself so fast was that he was in cahoots with the administration, and they knew the whole time what was happening to John Dalli.

Dolores Cristina went on to defend Lou Bondi and said PBS had sent him.

Shameful.

October, November and December were a horrible three months for Gonzi. His inability to quell rebellion led him to lose a budget vote.

From Castille the first pressure on the Maltese police started in December. The police were divided and did not agree that John Dalli should be prosecuted. But John Rizzo insisted. So much so that he wanted Dalli's phone tapped.

In mid-December, I was picking up sound bites that the Office of the Prime Minister was pressuring the police to take action at once. The OPM also added that it was important to remand Dalli in custody.

The pressure on the police was incredible.

It was in stark contrast to the way the oil scandal suspects were treated.

The OPM needed a diversion from the bad press that the Franco Debono budget farce had left Gonzi with.

John Dalli was still giving interviews until the third week of November, when he left to start legal procedures against the European Commission. When he realised from his contacts that the police intended to remand him in custody over Christmas, Dalli's health deteriorated and he was hospitalised.

There will be some who speculate that he did not return because he was scared of justice.

I would say providence was on his side. If he had not fallen seriously sick, the Gonzi administration and its cronies would have made a feast of him. Needless to say the perception that Dalli was guilty was fuelled most by Gonzi's ruthless weapon, the Queen of Bile herself.

There is no way in hell that Dalli would have been given a fair assessment, interrogation and hearing under the Gonzi administration. And I believe - and have every right to believe - the same of justice under former Police Commissioner John Rizzo.

John Dalli is not above the law, but neither are those who treat an investigation like a crusade.

It is diabolical.

What is even more sinister is the role of EU officials or former officials in the Dalli investigation.

Let us look at Michel Petite. He was head of legal services at the Commission, the second most influential arm of the EU. He worked with the EU but then left to work with the firm Clifford Chance, which works for Philip Morris, the tobacco giant. Petite (who, by the way, is on the EU's ethics and transparency committee and was appointed by Barroso) went straight to Catherine Day, whom he knows as a friend, and reported the Silvio Zammit demand.

That Zammit was entrapped is clear to me and should be clear to everyone.

Kessler launched his investigations in record time.

24 hours, to be precise.

"With gusto" is how we would describe it.

In Malta he found a willing partner, Rita Schembri, appointed and trusted by Godwin Grima, the Principal Permanent Secretary and someone who turned a blind eye to her behaviour, and of course Richard Cachia Caruana, who pushed her nomination to be on the Supervisory Committee overseeing Kessler's OLAF.

By the way, Rita Schembri was appointed Permanent Secretary in September 2012, an unprecedented move considering that she only had 20 staff members.

I have compared Kessler to Inspector Clouseau and Don Quixote.

But four of his mistakes are the most atrocious:

(1)    He tapped phones without the right authorisation.

(2)    He interrogated Gayle Kimberley, then wined and dined her. Then he made her sign a declaration. What a sham.  What if she was intoxicated?

(3)    He, or OLAF, told Gayle Kimberley not to change the invented story that she had met John Dalli in February.

(4)    He condemned Dalli on circumstantial evidence based on a number of telephone registers - not the actual conversations they refer to - between him and Zammit.

The registers do not include content, so they can only create guesswork. It is the timing and sequence which are known. The rest is left to supposition.

But supposition is what the barbarians used during their rampages and rapes as they conquered Kessler's South Tyrol in sacking Rome. They decapitated all the Romans, imagining that all Romans were enemies and hence condemnable.

But Kessler's impotent interrogation methods did not stop with wining and dining a potential culprit but continued in applying OLAF's bizarre interrogation protocol.

He continues to defy the European Parliament and refuses to resign. He does this because he has the backing of Jose Maria Barroso.

Am I surprised? No.

I am not at all surprised. Because when I saw the intricate connections between Michel Petite as lobbyist for Philip Morris and his former role as Chief of EU legal services, his close relationships with Barroso and Catherine Day and his position on an EU committee on transparency, of all things, I started to wonder.

More so since it was he who approached Catherine Day about the Swedish Match recordings.

Then we have Rita Schembri. If ever there was someone who should be questioned for her dubious role in the Dalli investigations, it's her. I have no doubt that this former Labourite and bright star in the eyes of Richard Cachia Caruana and Godwin Grima was not simply an honest bystander.

Rita Schembri has fallen from grace, with good reason.

Our front-page story also reveals that Rita Schembri has indicated that she acted on the orders of third parties.

What I do not know is where we go from here.

This is no longer a question of a newspaper column. What we need here is a proper investigation, one that looks at the workings of the political class, the civil service, the police, AFCOS, the Attorney General's office and of course the EU institutions.

When the scandal broke many argued that Malta's image had been blemished by John Dalli. Perhaps we need to turn the tables and start to blame Kessler, Barroso and the tobacco industry for this state of affairs.

And of course the little men who resided at the Auberge de Castille before March 9, who rubbed their hands together at the obliteration of a political career, one that the PN once praised but that it now has conveniently forgotten.