The EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, has nominated one of its members to compile a report on the investigation that led to the forced resignation of John Dalli as EU Commissioner.

OLAF’s supervisory committee president Johan Denolf yesterday informed MEPs he wanted to see whether OLAF had observed all the rules when investigating Mr Dalli and others involved in the case.

He was speaking during a meeting in Brussels yesterday between the EP’s budgetary control committee and the OLAF committee.

“The report is not ready yet and we should be in a position to discuss it by the end of this month. Until then, we can’t really reveal any of the information we know about this case,” Mr Denolf said. Swedish Match, a tobacco firm, has alleged that a Maltese businessman had tried to affect legislation, particularly relating to the EU’s ban on the export of a smokeless tobacco product called snus, by using his contacts with Mr Dalli.

Mr Dalli has denied the allegations. He has also repeatedly criticised OLAF head Giovanni Kessler, accusing him and the European Commission of not giving him the right to respond to their allegations and claiming they reached their conclusions based only on circumstantial evidence.

Both Mr Kessler and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso dismissed Mr Dalli’s claims and said the former Maltese Commissioner was provided with all his rights and had also opted to take a lawyer with him when he was questioned.

The five-member supervisory committee appointed by the EU institutions acts as OLAF regulator and checks whether all procedures are conducted according to the rules.

During yesterday’s meeting, sources said it became evident that the supervisory committee and Mr Kessler were not seeing eye to eye on various procedural issues, prompting the chair of the supervisory committee to tell MEPs that collaboration with OLAF was lacking.

Asked whether the supervisory committee was given access to Mr Dalli’s report, Mr Denolf did not reply directly, although he indicated that not all the report’s contents have been passed on to his committee.

During the meeting, the former chairman of the supervisory committee, Christian Timmermans, told MEPs he had resigned from the committee for “personal reasons” and still stayed on as a member.

“Although I’d like that the personal reasons remain personal, I can assure everyone that my resignation had nothing to do with the Dalli investigation,” he said.

Rita Schembri, a member of the committee and the director general of Malta’s anti-fraud agency (AFCOS), told MEPs that her role in this investigation was minimal and procedural.

She said that she withdrew from the case immediately after the news of Mr Dalli’s resignation broke.

“I didn’t wait for the media to tell me what to do. I informed the other members of the committee that I wanted to withdraw from this case to make sure that there was no shadow of a conflict of interest,” she said.

MEPs yesterday continued to insist for access to the report on the Dalli investigation and said they expect Mr Barroso to allow more transparency over this issue.

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