Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1508267
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 SEPTEMBER 2023 NEWS Smoke and mirrors: Dalligate probe gets accountability slap The phone-call OLAF used to conclusively learn of a bribe that might inf luence decisions by former European commissioner John Dalli was said to have breached the human rights of Silvio Zammit, who died while still being accused of trading in inf luence. MATTHEW VELLA revisits a 10-year case yet to achieve any closure DALLIGATE 'returned'. The forgotten Maltese paleo-scandal of trading in influ- ence that rocked the career of dis- graced former commissioner John Dalli, pulsed back into the news cycle 10 years later after a Belgian court decided that the EU's an- ti-fraud agency OLAF had mis- handled the cash-for-influence investigation. Giovanni Kessler, an Italian an- ti-mafia and anti-corruption mav- erick who today is the head of the Italian Customs and Monopoly Agency, was decreed to have ille- gally taped a former Dalli canvass- er, the late Silvio Zammit, as part of an investigation. A Belgian judge ruled on the criminal complaint, from Zam- mit – who until his death was still facing charges of soliciting a €60 million bribe from the European smokeless tobacco lobby Estoc – in an unprecedented rebuke of the EU's justice system. Dalli, who up until October 2012 had been the EU's health com- missioner, was embroiled in the OLAF investigation into Zam- mit's contacts with Estoc and its main company, Swedish Match. As the investigation goes, Dalli was said to have entertained tele- phone calls from Zammit while the latter was actively soliciting the bribe from Estoc to convince the commissioner to overturn an EU retail ban on Swedish tobacco snus. At the time, Dalli was nego- tiating rules on the Tobacco Prod- ucts Directive; while the legali- sation of snus to be sold outside Sweden was not on the table, but Swedish Match had contracted a Maltese lobbyist – Gayle Kimber- ley – to approach Dalli on a possi- ble concession. Pure Maltese drama The scandal carried with it all the elements of the smalltown networking that makes Malta what it is. Gayle Kimberley, a for- mer functionary at the European Council, was tapped by a Swedish Match official to approach Dalli in Malta on the prospect of over- turning the retail ban on snus in the upcoming revision of the To- bacco Products Directive. Kimberley had been lobbying on the side: she was then a legal at the Malta Gaming Authority, with an intimate friendship to one Iosif Galea – today that former MGA employee is a gaming consultant, recently extradited from Germany to face financial crime charges in Malta (he was arrested in Italy in 2021 on a German EAW for tax evasion). Galea put Kimberley in touch with Silvio Zammit, a Nationalist Party canvasser heavily involved in Sliema community life and business, who was connected to John Dalli, the veteran PN finance minister. Zammit was also known to Swedish Match – apparently he had been selling snus to gaming emigrés in Malta from his Sliema kiosk, and Kimberley called up- on him to secure a meeting with Dalli. OLAF investigation The investigation was prompt- ed by a report from Estoc lob- byists to the European Commis- sion, into the request for a bribe from Zammit. And here the dra- ma balloons into an unexpected plot-twister. Kessler, as eager prosecutor, took it upon himself to ambush Kimberley while representing the MGA at a conference in Portugal in 2012 – a highly unorthodox way of extracting information from a possible witness. "I was ambushed and put into a room. There were three of them," she told a court hearing the corrup- tion charges against John Dalli this year. Without any legal assis- tance, Kimberley – though free to leave the hotel room booked by OLAF – was under the impres- sion that she would lose her job if she did, remembering the impos- ing impression made by Kessler on her. "He had wanted to see my computer and files about meet- ings with the LGA (lotteries and gaming authority)," she said of the six-hour meeting. Even more controversially, Kimberley was taken out for an informal dinner with Kessler, offering her wine so that she could "relax a bit". But the clincher in the OLAF investigation was that, although bereft of direct evidence con- necting Dalli to Zammit's bribe request to Estoc, there was "un- ambiguous circumstantial evi- dence" in the form of phone calls repeatedly made between Zam- mit and Dalli at crucial times: in between Zammit's conversations with ESTOC for example, or after Zammit's interrogation by OLAF chief Giovanni Kessler. For the then-president of the European Commission, Manuel José Barroso, the suggestion that Dalli was entertaining such con- tacts with Zammit was enough to show that he was not above suspicion in the entire affair. Taking immediate action to avert a disastrous scandal that could embroil the EC itself, in October 2012 Barroso asked Dalli to re- sign – the Maltese politician left, vowing to contest Barroso in the European Court of Justice (both cases for unfair dismissal and damages were thrown out by the ECJ years later). Damaging circumstantial evidence Nothing could move Kessler or Barroso from the picture that Dalli may have been aware of Zammit's machinations with Es- toc and did nothing to place him- self out of danger. On his part Dalli denied discussing snus with Zammit after having accepted a meeting with Kimberley back in January 2012, and that the Zam- mit phone-calls (only logs of the calls were possible at the time) dealt simply with party matters. The big mystery is the role played by Kimberley in allegedly convincing her Sliema compa- triot, Silvio Zammit, to solic- it the Estoc bribe – depending on whose story one believes of course. OLAF found a note prepared by Kimberley for Zammit, as follow-up questions to ask Dalli in a meeting set for 10 February (the feast of St Paul's shipwreck in Malta). Zammit returned the 'Meeting with the Commissioner' paper with hand-written notes. Allegedly, these notes suggested that Zammit noted a "six zeroes" figure to lift the snus ban – it is moot whether he jotted it down while discussing with Dalli or whether, as he claimed, this was suggested to him by Kimberley herself. OLAF's analysis of the Dalli telephone logs were enough to suggest a pattern – calls from Zammit on the day he lunched with Estoc officials, when meet- ing Kimberley, while Zammit was trying to solicit the multi-million fee from Estoc, or the call after OLAF approached Silvio Zammit in Malta to be called in for an in- terview. So in his final summary, Kess- ler stated that while no conclu- sive evidence of Dalli acting as a mastermind in this bribe request existed, Dalli might have been aware that his name was being used by Zammit to gain finan- cial advantage. "At no stage did Dalli take action to disassociate himself from the facts or to re- port the circumstances of which he was aware. As a result... it can be considered that Dalli put at risk the image and the reputation of the European Commission in the eyes of the tobacco producers and, potentially in front of public opinion." John Dalli