The Office of the Prime Minister yesterday said it was following the latest developments on the Dalligate scandal closely and appealed for transparency at every stage of the investigation.

In a dry two-line statement, which skirted questions about the role of the Malta police, the OPM said it would not be prudent to comment but insisted on transparency.

The comment came in reaction to the latest twist in Brussels this week after questions were raised about the investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF.

The probe had led to the sacking of European Commissioner John Dalli after OLAF concluded there was “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” he knew that his former canvasser, Silvio Zammit, had asked for €60 million in return for the lifting of a European ban on snus, a smokeless tobacco that can only be sold in Sweden under EU rules.

Inge Gräßle, the European People’s Party’s spokeswoman on the Budgetary Control Committee of the European Parliament, has even called for the resignation of the agency’s head, Giovanni Kessler.

She justified her demand by referring to breaches of fundamental rights flagged by OLAF’s supervisory committee, including unlawful telephone recordings.

The MEP also made reference to an interview with Swedish Match executive, Johann Gabrielsson, in which he said that his company was urged by OLAF to stick to a misleading version of events that wrongly placed Maltese lawyer Gayle Kimberley in a meeting with Mr Dalli in February.

Mr Dalli had acknowledged that he met with Dr Kimberley on January 6, when she gave him a presentation of the arguments for lifting the ban, but denied having a second meeting with her and Mr Zammit on February 10, when the first intimations of a willingness to lift the snus ban were supposed to have been made.

Outgoing Euro-Parliamentarian Simon Busuttil, whose remit was justice and home affairs among others and who worked with Ms Gräßle, also urged for transparency and called on European Commission president Manuel Barroso to give an explanation on these latest developments.

The disputed February 10 meeting is crucial because Dr Kimberley had originally told Swedish Match that Mr Dalli had “expressed clearly that the ban on snus was absurd” on that occasion and that “he had the will, the arguments and the Commission’s support to lift the ban on snus” but that it would be political suicide for him to do so.

She later changed that version to say that she was reporting on what Mr Zammit had told her.

Both Mr Dalli and Mr Zammit consistently denied that they had discussed snus at that meeting.

On this point, Swedish Match clarified that OLAF had not actually instructed the company “to provide a false or misleading picture” but recommended that it’s executives should stick to the facts as they knew them (as given to them by Dr Kimberley) in their public statements rather than speculate about the version of events uncovered by OLAF.

Questions sent to both OLAF and the police remained unanswered with both referring to their inability to comment in view of ongoing proceedings.

However, sources close to the investigation pointed out that it was OLAF that had uncovered the fact that Dr Kimberley lied to Swedish Match about being present at the second meeting with Mr Dalli.

“By the time the matter reached the Malta police, there was no doubt on the part of investigators that Mr Dalli did not meet Dr Kimberley at this second meeting. Everyone was attesting to this version of events: Dr Kimberley (who changed her version), Silvio Zammit and John Dalli, so why would anyone at this point have an interest in confusing matters,” a source said.

In other words, the conclusions of the OLAF report in respect to Mr Dalli could not have hinged on this second meeting and what Dr Kimberley had said about it because the agency had already established that she was not present.

The development, nonetheless, again casts the spotlight on the Sliema lawyer, who, according to Mr Zammit’s defence lawyers (who read the yet unpublished OLAF report), kept changing her version of events to OLAF’s investigators.

Maltese investigators indicated that they had no plans to arraign her. However, Mr Zammit’s defence lawyers, Edward Gatt and Kris Busietta, insisted that the OLAF report clearly indicated that Dr Kimberley should face charges.

On this point, the prosecution insisted that its investigation was independent of the OLAF probe and that the Malta police carried out their own interview and compiled their own evidence.

Attempts to contact Ms Gräßle yesterday were unsuccessful.