Silvio Zammit, the man at the centre of the John Dalli resignation as European commissioner, had again approached snus lobbyists after his alleged request for a bribe was rejected, tobacco producer Swedish Match told The Times.
After snus producer Swedish Match had rejected his request for money in return for influencing legislation in Mr Dalli’s portfolio, Mr Zammit approached the European lobby group representing the industry with fresh offers to set up meetings with the then commissioner, a company spokeswoman said.
An EU anti-fraud investigation concluded there was “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” indicating Mr Dalli knew Mr Zammit had asked for a bribe from Swedish snus lobbyists, which led to his resignation last week. The former Maltese minister has vehemently denied the claims.
Swedish Match rejected Mr Zammit’s alleged request for €60 million on February 21 and reported the matter to the Swedish Government three days later. They then filed a complaint with the European Commission in May.
Asked why the company had waited so long, Swedish Match said they did not plan to take it further until Mr Zammit made a second approach, this time with the European Smokeless Tobacco Council (Estoc), a Brussels-based lobby group for the industry, of which Swedish Match is a prominent member.
“At first, we weren’t sure if this was a credible offer. It looked credible but we were not certain and, in any case, we felt we had done our duty by reporting the matter to our Government,” she said. When the company found out that Mr Zammit contacted Estoc, the alarm bells started ringing, the spokeswoman said.
“At this point, we thought to ourselves: maybe this might actually be bigger than we thought. We had not told all our partners of the bribe offer when it happened but when we found out about this second approach, we informed them that it was not a good idea to do business with the Maltese entrepreneur.”
She referred to an e-mail that has been made public between Estoc secretary general Inge Delfosse and Mr Zammit, in which the snus lobbyist asked the Sliema restaurateur how much he would charge to arrange a meeting with Mr Dalli.
“That e-mail has been unfairly bandied about as proof of entrapment,” the Swedish Match spokeswoman said, “but the truth is that it was part of a much larger exchange that was initiated by Mr Zammit.”
When contacted, the former PN councillor maintained the stand he has taken ever since news of the scandal broke out and declined to comment.
The revelation comes on the back of a story in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday in which sources close to the investigation were reported saying that Mr Dalli met with Mr Zammit on February 10, the same day that the latter had a meeting with a young Maltese lawyer representing Swedish Match in Malta, and allegedly asked for the bribe.
Mr Dalli acknowledged that he had a meeting with Mr Zammit on that day when the two had simply "discussed the fact that the Nationalist Party had accepted Mr Zammit as a candidate in the local council elections".
The Maltese lawyer at the centre of the matter appears to be a central witness to the case. According to Swedish Match, she was the person to whom the bribe request was made at the February 10 meeting.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Zammit further elaborated on this request in a subsequent meeting at his Sliema restaurant, Peppi’s, on February 13.
In an interview with the EU news agency Europolitics, Swedish Match’s public affairs vice-president Patrik Hilldingson said that his company had come into contact with Mr Zammit (whom Swedish Match still refers to only as “the Maltese entrepreneur”) through the young Maltese lawyer with a view to assess whether Mr Dalli was fully understanding of his company’s argument about the unfairness of the EU ban on snus.
In spite of the EU ban, snus, a form of tobacco that is consumed orally, can be sold in Sweden through a special derogation the country obtained before joining the EU.
However, companies like Swedish Match have long been arguing that the ban is unreasonable, seeing as other more harmful tobacco products, not least cigarettes, could be traded.
“She (the Maltese lawyer) agreed with us to set up one meeting with Dalli to try to learn what he knows about our case. Does he even know the word snus?” Mr Hilldingson told Europolitics.
As a result, according to Mr Hilldingson, two meetings were held, one in January and the other in February.
According to Mr Hilldingson, the Maltese lawyer told Swedish Match that Mr Dalli had explained that all arguments behind the snus ban were actually in favour of Swedish Match. Then he said that, as a health commissioner, Mr Dalli’s political career would be over if he lifted the ban on snus.
Mr Dalli disputes the second meeting took place but says: “I told Mr Zammit and the young lawyer that it was politically suicidal to touch the snus ban when I explained the situation to them on January 6. I never discussed any issue regarding snus with either of them after the meeting of January 6.”
According to Mr Hilldingson, Mr Dalli left the meeting at one point. From then on, the discussion went into a “very, very odd direction” when Mr Zammit asked why Mr Dalli would make a suicidal political decision without gaining anything. “The solution was simple: we had to pay,” Mr Hilldingson said.