Dalli urges publication of OLAF report

‘Convinced’ findings will cause him no embarrassment

Malta’s former EU commissioner John Dalli yesterday reiterated his call for the OLAF report that led to his resignation from the European Commission last week to be made public as soon as possible so that he would be able to properly defend himself against what he believes are trumped up charges against him.

Once the report is made public, Mr Dalli, who has not yet seen the charges against him, says he will be able to investigate the accusations levelled against him for himself.

“I still do not know who was involved or how, and once the report is released I will also investigate it myself to see exactly what happened, or what did not happen,” he said.

Interviewed on the Dissett television programme by Reno Bugeja last night, Mr Dalli, who has been at the centre of a Europe-wide cashfor-influence scandal over new tobacco controls he was drafting as commissioner, also said he believed that people in Malta were being informed of the details of the OLAF investigation into him as it progressed.

“Today,” he said, “I am convinced that Malta also figures in this whole scenario. Just compare the reactions of politicians and the media here in Malta with those abroad, there is an enormous difference.

“Outside Malta they are wondering what has actually happened and they want to know (more before passing judgement). But in Malta, from the first second, they accepted the charges against me and began attacking me. Everything was prepared and the media started its campaign from the word ‘go’.”

Mr Dalli said his lawyers – Maltese and Belgian lawyers as well as experts in this particular type of jurisprudence - are at the moment assessing possible lawsuits over his resignation, and that perhaps by next week a way forward may be identified. Such a case, he said, could be presented to the Courts of Malta, in Brussels or even at the European Court of Human Rights.

Asked about the letter European Commissioner José Manuel Barroso sent him this week, in which he basically asked Mr Dalli to behave himself, Mr Dalli replied, “I will not be intimidated but I will defend my integrity in every way and with every means possible.”

This week the Office of the Attorney General handed the report, as well as its recommendation on whether to investigate or not, over to the police, in whose court the ball currently lies.

And while he sees nothing untoward in the way in which the report has done the rounds, and while confirming that he has not as yet been questioned by the police, Mr Dalli expressed his wish that the report which has condemned him be published.

“I have heard nothing yet, and up to now I do not know on what this circumstantial evidence is. Let the process continue but the police need to declare what the course of action will be and let the report be published as soon as possible. I am convinced there is nothing in the report that will redden my face.

“But I do expect that this matter will be concluded as soon as possible, and not, as had been the case with the accusations against me in 2004, four years later.”

Back then, he says, he had been told the case was closed but he ended up being vindicated in court, and he says the same will happen of Barroso’s ‘case closed’.

Mr Dalli also points to an arrangement between the European Commission and the tobacco industry, in which tobacco companies paid €2 billion to help the EU enforce its systems against contraband cigarettes.

Many, he said, are asking if there was an arrangement between the Commission and the tobacco industry, citing a news report this week to the effect that one paragraph in the agreement said that the agreement would be cancelled if the EC acted to the detriment of the tobacco industry.

Mr Dalli had said that the progress, or lack thereof, of his now stalled tobacco directive, which he says stood to cost the tobacco industry billions of euros and also save hundreds of thousands of lives, will determine whether there was a hand in Big Tobacco in his downfall.

Mr Dalli said it will remain to seen if the original timetable is kept or if the directive is delayed further, as well as the amendments that are made to the final version and if amendments he had resisted are included in the final directive at the end of the day.

Mr Dalli once again points to the fact that Mr Barroso was in Malta on 5 October, and says he is also given to believe that the Maltese authorities were being kept abreast of the progress of investigations.

He points to Rita Schembri who heads the Office of the Prime Minister’s internal audit unit and also heads the anti-fraud coordinating service (AFCOS) which liaises with OLAF in Malta and which conducted part of the investigation into Mr Dalli. She withdrew from her role in OLAF’s supervisory committee so as to avoid a conflict of interest on 17 October, a day after the investigation was referred to Malta’s Attorney General.

Insisting that she had a hand in OLAF’s local investigations into him, Mr Dalli asks, “Do you believe that she informed no one in Malta of what was happening? Do you believe that when Barroso was here on 5 October that they (he and the Prime Minister or his people) did not discuss the case?”