[attach id=244084 size="medium"]Former European Commissioner John Dalli. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli[/attach]
The medical certificate enabling former European Commissioner John Dalli to postpone meeting Maltese investigators stated he could not travel or face “psycho-social exposure”.
The original medical note filed in December and valid until January 20 said the “patient is not able to fly or travel long distances because of a medical problem”.
A second certificate, which extended Mr Dalli’s stay abroad till the end of February, was a little more detailed.
It said, in a free translation from German, that Mr Dalli was in the “psycho-social” care of Dr Michael Scholten, whose clinic is in Mettlach, Germany, and that due to Mr Dalli’s “health problems at this time he is not able to travel or face psycho-social exposure”.
That period was extended again in March. However, MaltaToday has now reported that Mr Dalli last week gave a statement to Belgian judicial police, in a testimony that lasted three-and-a-half hours.
Due to John Dalli’s health problems at this time he is not able to travel or face psycho-social exposure
A day later, he failed to appear for a hearing on libel proceedings he initiated in Malta against The Times.
His lawyer Stephen Tonna Lowell said he would be filing a medical certificate to justify Mr Dalli’s absence. Magistrate Francesco Depasquale adjourned the case to May.
Sources said the testimony Mr Dalli gave in Brussels was likely to be connected to the defamation proceedings that he initiated against Swedish Match earlier in the year. He had not been present in at least two previous hearings.
The tobacco company triggered the investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF last year when they reported that Mr Dalli’s former canvasser Silvio Zammit had asked them for a €60 million bribe in return for the lifting of a Europe-wide ban on snus – a smokeless tobacco that can only be sold in Sweden under EU rules.
Mr Zammit, who now faces charges of trading in influence, maintains his innocence.
However, OLAF investigators insist that Mr Zammit offered to help lift the ban in the review of the Tobacco Directive, which Mr Dalli was concluding at the time this offer was made.
While the OLAF investigation report – which has not been published – was not conclusive in respect to the former Commissioner’s involvement, the agency’s head Giovanni Kessler had said there was “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” showing that Mr Dalli knew that this request for money was being made in his name. The European Commission demanded his resignation on this basis.
According to the newspaper report, Mr Dalli also gave Belgian judicial police a recorded conversation between Green MEP José Bové and Swedish Match official Johann Gabrielsson, in which the tobacco executive said OLAF officials as well as the Maltese police “suggested” he stick to a version of events that had been discredited in investigations.
The Maltese police denied making any such suggestion, while Swedish Match itself clarified that Mr Gabrielsson had simply been asked to stick to the facts known to the company without speculating on what had been uncovered during the investigation.
In a press conference in Brussels last week Mr Bové insisted that the recording showed that OLAF had asked Swedish Match to lie.
The pickle is over a meeting that took place on February 10, which is salient because Maltese lawyer Gayle Kimberley had originally told Swedish Match, whom she represented, that she was at this meeting and that Mr Dalli had said 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.
Mr Dalli always denied having met Ms Kimberley or any other snus lobbyist in February.
In fact, OLAF investigators established in their probe that the Sliema lawyer had lied to Swedish Match about her presence in that meeting.
A meeting did take place between Mr Zammit and Mr Dalli but they both claim it had nothing to do with snus.
Beyond the OLAF probe, Maltese police have consistently insisted that they ran a separate investigation that did not rely on the evidence uncovered by the Brussels-based agency.
Moreover, back in December police were preparing to charge Mr Dalli but were stalled when he travelled to Brussels and then presented medical certificates, saying he could not travel.
The Times asked the police whether in the circumstances they would be asking for Mr Dalli to return or issue a European Arrest Warrant. However, the questions were not answered by the time of writing.
mmicallef@timesofmalta.com