Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/480415
WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT WEDNESDAY EDITION WEDNESDAY • 18 MARCH 2015 • ISSUE 407 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY €1.00 Newspaper post Intolerance Killings Vandalism Don't forget! VOTE NO Leaders debate on Labour's two-year rule • pg 5 September 2016 opening for Barts Medical School in Gozo MIRIAM DALLI A first intake of 60 students at the Barts Medi- cal School in Gozo is expected by September 2016, MaltaToday has learnt. Part of the Queen Mary University of London, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry is expected to welcome 300 students over a five-year period. The government will be signing the agree- ment with the Queen Mary University of Lon- don today. Speaking on TimesTalk, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat confirmed that a new hospital will be opened in Gozo while St Luke's Hospital in Guardamangia will be reconverted through a planned €200 million investment by the pri- vate sector. A request for proposals will be is- sued. "The investment in Gozo will see its hospital at par, if not better than Mater Dei Hospital," Muscat said, adding that Barts Medical School was one of the top five medical schools in the UK. He said that the government's plan in- cludes an increase in bed space. Giving an assurance that healthcare will remain free while workers' conditions in the healthcare division will be safeguarded, Mus- cat said linking education and health was an example of the government's innovative vision to generate economic growth. The Labour government eyes both Malta and Gozo for their potential to develop as a regional medical and healthcare hub as well as a hub for educational and training services. Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry is one of Britain's leading medi- cal and dental schools with 1,600 undergradu- ate and 750 postgraduate students. It offers international levels of excellence in research and teaching while serving a population of un- rivalled diversity, among which cases of diabe- tes, hypertension, heart disease, TB, oral dis- ease and cancers are prevalent. Kessler: 'Dalli wanted to lift snus ban', Dalli accuses OLAF chief of perjury Giovanni Kessler (left) on his way to court, and (right) accused Silvio Zammit: the latter fl ipped his middle fi nger in court, unnoticed, when Kessler was asked to identify him in the courtroom MATTHEW VELLA OLAF chief Giovanni Kessler yes- terday told a Maltese court that two of John Dalli's former aides, Joanna Darmanin and Paola Duarte, told investigators probing new allega- tions on the former commissioner's Bahamas layover, that he wanted to lift the snus ban. The interviews with the two aides, Darmanin having been Dalli's head of cabinet, were deposited in court yesterday in the compilation of evidence against Silvio Zammit, accused of soliciting a €60 million bribe from Swedish Match and the European Smokeless Tobacco Coun- cil (Estoc). It was Kessler's investigation that prompted the resignation of Dalli from Commissioner for health and consumer affairs on 16 October 2012, alleging that Dalli was aware of Zammit's bribe. Kessler yesterday said that in an on- going investigation on Dalli, ostensi- bly accusations of a trip by private jet to the Bahamas at a time where he could have been alerted to the OLAF investigation by Silvio Zammit, the two former aides said that Dalli, in a formal meeting of the Cabinet, tried to push for lifting the ban on snus. "The two witnesses, Joanna Dar- manin – at the time chef de cabinet of John Dalli – and Ms Duarte gave two interviews, records of which I don't have with me but can be pro- vided, said that Dalli, on two occa- sions on 24 January 2012 and 28 Feb- ruary 2012, pushed for the lifting of the ban, or he tried to see what was necessary to do so." The Cabinet meetings dealt with amendments to the Tobacco Prod- ucts Directive that Dalli was dis- cussing at the time. Kessler yesterday also described Silvio Zammit, a one-time canvasser of Dalli, as "the man with golden key" that gave Swedish Match and Estoc access to what should have been an "inaccessible" commissioner. Going through an exhaustive chronology of the investigation OLAF carried out between May and September, on instruction by the Commission's secretary-general Catherine Day, Kessler explained how Swedish Match's complaint was dealt with. He said Zammit had already in- troduced a former Estoc chairman, Tomas Hammargren, to John Dalli while the commissioner was on holi- day in Gozo back in 2010. PAGE 3 WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT WEDNESDAY Kessler: 'Dalli wanted to lift snus ban', ISSUE NO. 67 | MARCH 2015 THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE KAMRA TALPERITI FREE INSIDE The Architect