OLAF supervisory chairman says Dalli investigation has ‘potential problems’

John Dalli in Brussels to file lawsuit against Swedish Match, as police issue criminal charges against former canvasser implicated in snus bribe.

13 December 2012, 12:00am
by Matthew Vella

3 min read

John Dalli will be filing for court action in Brussels against Swedish Match.

Clarified at 7:15pm with OLAF comment

The supervisory committee of the EU's anti-fraud office OLAF "discovered a number of potential problems" in the investigation carried out on former European Commissioner John Dalli, and issued recommendations to the OLAF director-general over the way in which the unit was conducting its investigations.

The revelation comes from a letter published by New Europe, in which OLAF's supervisory committee chairman Johan Denolf tells MEP Michael Theurer that the anti-fraud unit did not follow its own rules in the way the investigation was fast-tracked into the hands of the Maltese attorney general.

In the answers to the 154 questions sent by the European Parliament to the Commission about the John Dalli investigated - claimed by OLAF to have been aware of a €60 million bribe being solicited by a canvasser of his, Silvio Zammit, to influence tobacco legislation - the EC insisted that OLAF followed correct procedures.

But in his letter to Theurer, Denolf questions the legality of the procedure followed in the OLAF report which gave EC president José Barroso the justification to demand that Dalli resign on 16 October, 2012.

"OLAF's final report was transmitted to the Maltese national judicial authorities before expiry of the period of five days foreseen for the Committee.

"This prevented the Supervisory Committee from carrying out the examination of the respect of fundamental rights and procedural guarantees in OLAF's investigation prior to the said transmission. According to the judgement of the General Court in Case T-48/05, the Supervisory Committee must be consulted prior to such transmission for the sake of the protection of fundamental rights."

OLAF handed over its final report to the Commission's secretary-general Catherine Day on 15 October, following which Dalli resigned on 16 October. But instead of being passed on to the supervisory committee, the report was sent to the Maltese attorney general on 19 October, and only a shortened and anonymised version of the report handed to the supervisory committee.

John Dalli is currently in Brussels where he is expected to go to the Palace of Justice to apply against Swedish Match, the company that reported a €60 million bribe request by former Sliema deputy mayor and PN activist Silvio Zammit.

Denolf's statement contrasts with that given to MaltaToday by an OLAF spokesperson on 5 November: the office claimed that there was "no specific deadline" for transmitting the report to the committee, which is why OLAF provided a "shortened and anonymised" of the final report on 17 October.

OLAF had told MaltaToday that due to the "importance and sensitivity" of the Dalli case it was considered inappropriate to follow the general procedures and delay the transmission of the final report to the judicial authorities for five days.

"Following a request from the supervisory committee, full access to the entire investigation file including the un-redacted investigation report and all evidence collected, was granted before the report was forwarded to the Maltese Attorney General," an OLAF spokesperson said today. "Full transparency has been given to the Supervisory Committee in accordance with the agreed procedures."

OLAF's investigation into Dalli claimed "unambiguous circumstantial evidence" that the health commissioner was aware of the bribe attempt and did not report Zammit. The Sliema restaurateur, a former Nationalist deputy mayor and party activist, asked Swedish snus producers Swedish Match and their lobbyist in Malta for €60 million to lift the EU's snus ban.

The supervisory committee has also carried out an analysis with regard to the opening of the investigation and respect of the principle of proportionality, the conduct of the investigation, the respect of fundamental rights and procedural guarantees, respect of personal data protection requirements, and to the closing of OLAF's investigation.

Denolf said the committee had issued recommendations OLAF director Giovanni Kessler "which require a discussion with him on a more systemic level about the ways in which OLAF is conducting its investigations."

Matthew Vella, a freelance journalist at MaltaToday, was formerly executive editor at Malt...

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Simple, SomethingRight, these well meaning, generous, civic minded, benevolent, masters of death, as you so make them out to be, lied about events connected to him, with the consequence that he lost his job and reputation. That is the claim. Now let the courts decide.

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What claims could John Dalli possibly have against Swedish Match? Unlike cigarette companies that produce a product designed to be burnt then inhaled, which is highly addictive and contains many unlisted substances that turn into thousands of chemicals when converted to smoke, resulting in the single most preventable cause of death in humans, and which is widely thought to likely have been enshrined as the only possible way for people with a tobacco dependance to administer to themselves the substances found in tobacco under the proposed EU tobacco directive, once presided over by John Dalli, Swedish Snus offers a proven avenue for dependent tobacco users (yes, there a millions of them) to apply a harm minimization approach that saves lives by using a tobacco product which is next-to free of cancer causing substances due to its manufacturing process and which has been proven through hundreds of medical studies in Sweden conducted over at least a 25 year period to provide a smoker who changes to the product a prognosis identical to someone having quit all substances completely and who has a far greater chance of not returning to smoking than those who have tried quitting with pharmaceutical NRT's. The cancer statistics in Sweden (the envy of Europe) clearly show this with 20% of the male population using this substance and only 10% smoking. I find it hard to fathom what John Dalli could have against a company that has done such good in saving lives over many years and which from reports acted in complete propiety amongst the frameworks provided during consultations for the new EU tobacco directive.

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Silvio had made a declaration with the police which he later retarcted in which he stated that he was working for a third party, when asked if it was John Dalli he withdrew it, WHY? Who is or were the third party he mentioned? Maybe a political entity?

Igor P. Shuvalov •

"...the anti-fraud unit did not follow its own rules in the way the investigation was fast-tracked into the hands of the Maltese attorney general." This statement raises a number of questions: Who was responsible for this fast tracking? What was the reason for this fast-tracking? Who was so anxious to create a vacancy for Commissioner for the EU? ecc