Dalli also hid secret offshore firm from European Commission

The disgraced former European commissioner John Dalli had failed to declare his ownership of a secret British Virgin Islands firm when he took up his post as health and consumer affairs commissioner in 2009.

Dalli was obliged to declared any positions held in the previous 10 years as well as his financial interests in the firm Westmead Oveseas, which he opened in 2006 and then wound up in 2008.

The European Commission told euobserver.com it would not rule out taking Dalli to the EU’s Court of Justice, after weighing the seriousness of the breach.

“A possible reaction from the Commission will depend on a range of factors,” a spokesperson said, which would include the gravity of the breach, the consequences, circumstances and whether it was a deliberate or negligent breach.

The effects of any action could be as serious as having the ECJ stripping him of his pension rights.

The former Nationalist minister set up the secret offshore company in the British Virgin Islands without ever declaring it in the House of Representatives. Dalli’s two daughters replaced him as directors of the shell company in 2008, after he was appointed minister for social policy.

Dalli was an MP at the time, having been asked to resign as foreign minister in 2004 over allegations, later proven false, that he had pocketed bribes on a hospital tender.

Dalli told the Times of Malta and the ICIJ, which disclosed the secret company in a new data leak called the Pandora Papers, that he didn’t disclose the company because it was “inactive”. Westmead Overseas was closed in 2013, according to BVI registry records.

Dalli said that he created the company to hold equity in a project that “never materialised, and the company was not used.” He declined to elaborate. He added that his daughters “exited” the company in 2009.

Dalli was appointed minister in the Nationalist administration of 2008, before being kicked upstairs by prime minister Lawrence Gonzi to European Commissioner in 2009. Dalli resigned his office as European Commission in September 2012 after he was faced by accusations in an OLAF investigation that showed he had been in contact with restaurateur Silvio Zammit, when the latter was suspected of soliciting bribes from a Swedish snuff tobacco company seeking the end of a retail ban on its products.

The OLAF report found that Silvio Zammit had been approached by a Swedish Match lobbyist in Malta, Gayle Kimberley, and then sought to gain financial advantage in exchange for influence with Dalli to lift the retail ban on snus tobacco. No transaction was concluded between the company and the entrepreneur, and no payment was made.

Dalli is now set to be charged over the bribery allegations that saw him resign from the Commission in 2012.

In 2017, the authorities charged Dalli’s daughters, Claire Gauci Borda and Louisa Dalli, with money laundering in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud American pensioners. The daughters have denied wrongdoing, and the case is pending.