Updated | Hacking attempt on Dalli was made by PN officials

Updated at 6:45pm with Prime Minister's comments

European Commissioner John Dalli has claimed PN officials or party members were behind an attempted hacking of his email account, and that he had passed on the relevant information to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and the Police.

Reacting, Gonzi said he hoped the Police concluded its investigations shortly, and that the outcome of that investigations are made "public".

Dalli, a former leadership rival to Gonzi, told the press during a visit to the national abattoir that in a private meeting he had yesterday with the prime minister, he had passed on the names of PN officials whom he claims worked against him during the 2004 leadership campaign.

Dalli also took umbrage at the way he was made to resign in 2004 when Lawrence Gonzi told him he was "under investigation", when it turned out that a fabricated report alleging kickbacks had not even been passed on to the Commissioner of Police for investigation.

"What happened to me happened in the most incorrect way possible. The thing that bothers me was the fact that I was not informed of what I was being accused.

"In the case of Richard Cachia Caruana, an effort was made to have his witnesses declare what they would be accusing him of. In my case, there was a report in the hands of the prime minister that was not revealed to me and whose accusations I could not be aware of."

Dalli had resigned as foreign minister in 2004 on the basis of a private investigator's report containing fabricated allegations of kickbacks on a hospital equipment contract. The investigator was later arraigned on fraud charges and convicted, after Dalli had resigned.

"What happened to me was the highest form of disloyalty, which will haunt me forever. I knew of the contents of the investigator's report on the 15 August, when I had resigned the 4 July, when a journalist informed me that somebody had been arraigned on fraud charges over the report. That's when I got to know of the accusations."

On Thursday, Dalli met Gonzi to tell him that he had been the target of "renewed" attacks made against him, and to provide him with information on PN and government officials at the source of these alleged attacks. He also confirmed that he passed on the information to the Police for further investigation.

Asked about the PN's internal crisis and who should shoulder the responsibility for what happened, Dalli insisted that "who is leading should shoulder the responsibility", stopping short of mentioning names.

Dalli said he has have given Gonzi the origin of anonymous blogs, and also email conversations, which attacked him some time in February when his name was being floated as a possible candidate for the party leadership election in February.

Dalli also revealed that on Wednesday, 11 July, he was specifically asked by Cachia Caruana to issue a statement in his favour, but that he declined. But on Thursday, 12 July - the next day - he found that his email domain had been hacked in an attempt at replicating his email traffic, and claimed the hacking originated from an IP address that was directly linked to the group fomenting anonymous attacks on him.

Dalli has also passed on the names of party officials who he claims passed on information on to the Labour party in a bid to inflict damage upon him.