Updated | Kesslergate: Secret chats revealed

Former police commissioner John Rizzo was in possession of evidence of online chats and email exchanges, which allegedly show high-ranking officials at the Office of the Prime Minister and the Representation of the European Commission in Valletta, discuss John Dalli between March and October 2012.

The transcripts of these 'secret chats' were passed on to Rizzo by John Dalli, who received them from an anonymous source.

Among the persons who discussed Dalli in the secret chats, one person chatting from the Office of the Prime Minister on a Samsung device was named 'L.O.U.I.S' while another person was named 'DR. GK'.

While it is unclear who L.O.U.I.S is, coincidently the Italian EU's anti-fraud office chief Giovanni Kessler's initials are GK, as are those of Maltese lawyer and lobbyist Gayle Kimberly.

Both Kessler and Kimberly have the initials GK and in one excerpt L.O.U.I.S. writes to GK in broken Italian.

Throughout the secret chats, in which at least five persons are involved, John Dalli is consistently referred to as 'JDALLIBA ['liba' being a Maltese vulgar term for sperm].

The chats between these five persons include a number of messages on 15 October 2012, the day in which Kessler, head of the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, handed over the Dalli report to European Commission President Manuel Jose Barroso.

One day later, Dalli met Barroso in Brussels, where Barroso asked Dalli to resign, threatening that he would dismiss him if he didn't comply.

Records of the secret chats on 21 October 2012, show L.O.U.I.S write: "Cari Amici, Dobbiamo incontriamo questa settimana o la prossima. Fatemi sapere, ma il meeting e urgente." ('Dear friends, we need to meet this week or next. Let me know, but the meeting is urgent').

Passages of the online chat and email exchanges were given to Rizzo in November and December 2012 by Dalli's lawyer Stephen Tonna Lowell. However, the former commissioner never concluded the investigations on these messages.

Current Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit failed to answer MaltaToday's questions about the investigations on the secret chat evidence.

One of the persons involved in the chats, L.O.U.I.S, who allegedly chatted from a station at Castille, was also accused by Dalli's lawyer of having been behind a series of blogs on Dalli in April.

Dalli had asked the Police Commissioner John Rizzo to investigate a series of anonymous blogs that had attacked him some time in February when his name was being floated as a possible candidate for the party leadership.

Earlier this month, MaltaToday revealed that there is no criminal evidence to arraign or accuse former commissioner John Dalli. Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit said that the police investigations in relation to the OLAF report were ongoing, but as things stood right now, there is no evidence to incriminate John Dalli.

Dalli, a former PN leadership contender and longstanding finance minister, served as EU health commissioner until he was forced to resign. He has always insisted that he was a victim of the tobacco lobby and the various political interests in Brussels and Malta.

Dalli has maintained that he never knew of any bribe, nor that he masterminded one, and that he never had any intention of watering down the tobacco directive. He has since returned fire at Barroso, president of the European Commission, and at Catherine Day, EC secretary, accusing them of stalling the tobacco directive, which has yet to come into force.

On the other hand, OLAF chief Giovanni Kessler is under immense pressure by MEPs and the media to step down following a number of revelations which expose a series of shortcomings in the OLAF investigations on Dalli.