The Director-General of OLAF, the EU's anti-fraud office, Giovanni Kessler, said this afternoon that the Maltese businessman at the heart of the allegations which led to John Dalli's resignation had organised two meetings between Mr Dalli and lobbyists from the snus (tobacco) companies.
"Two meetings took place, not directly with the snus companies but let us say with lobbyists of these companies," Mr Kesseler said in Brussels.
"He (Mr Dalli) was aware that a person close to him was using his influence... he did not attempt to dissociate himself ...he was aware of this but he did not do anything to prevent, stop or report this," he said.
He said that the sum requested by the Maltese businessman to arrange the meetings was 'rather conspicious, gross, substantial'.
"We carried out a comprehensive, thorough, swift investigation making full use of all our investigative capacity, using all the legal tools for these investigations...we used all of them with no regards, no immunities...it was a full investigation, traditional investigation...and as all agencies do we put all the evidence together and we drew conclusions connecting all the pieces of evidence and making a reasoning which is detailed in our report. On the basis of the pieces of evidence we gathered and our reasoning, we arrived at the conclusions made." Mr Kessler (who is a magistrate) said.
Asked whether this might have been some kind of trap by the tobacco industry to get rid of an inconvenient commissioner, Mr Kessler said he had served 15 years as a public prosecutor and it was pretty obvious that this was a concern for the investigators. This issue was examined and the answer was given in the investigation. "We are truly certain that certain illicit requests were made for money in return for changing some decision by the commission, and there was some illicit use of the commissioner's name. That we know. It is clear.
"There is clear unambiguous evidence which suggests that the commissioner knew what was going on."
He said a large amount of money had been requested to change a decision.
He said the Maltese judicial authorities would now, independently, reach their own conclusions about whether to take further action.
Mr Kessler said no money was paid in this case. The money was only requested, the request was rejected and a report was filed to the Commission. There was no indication that some of this money might have gone to a political party and he excluded this.
Asked whether Mr Dalli had violated the code of conduct of commissioners, Mr Kessler said the whole report was made in the context of the code.
Mr Dalli resigned from the European Commission yesterday afternoon but is denying any knowledge of the alleged activities of the Maltese businessman - said to be Silvio Zammit.
In its statement yesterday, OLAF said that the Maltese entrepreneur had approached the company (Swedish Match) using his contacts with Mr Dalli and sought to gain financial advantages in exchange for influence over a possible future legislative proposal on snus. No transaction was concluded between the company and the entrepreneur and no payment was made.
The OLAF report did not find any conclusive evidence of the direct participation of Mr Dalli but did consider that he was aware of these events.