The police have reopened an investigation of Gayle Kimberley, the prosecution witness in the Dalligate affair, following the publication of fresh e-mails which suggest she guided the lobbying attempts of the man facing criminal charges in the case.

Investigators have been collecting fresh evidence and have met 49-year-old Silvio Zammit and his lawyers to evaluate a series of e-mails in his possession, police sources said.

The Sliema restaurateur is facing charges in connection with his alleged request for a bribe of €60 million from tobacco company Swedish Match in order to help lift a ban on snus – an orally consumed form of tobacco that can only be sold in Sweden under EU rules.

The case forced the resignation of Former European Commissioner John Dalli, after the EU anti-fraud agency (OLAF), which first investigated the case, claimed that the Maltese politician (who once had Mr Zammit as his canvasser) knew that his name was being used in connection with this bribe. However, the Maltese police declared it did not have enough evidence to proceed against him criminally.

Similarly, OLAF suggested that Dr Kimberley should be prosecuted but Maltese investigators concluded they did not have evidence against her and treated her as a witness.

However, Mr Zammit’s lawyers Edward Gatt and Kris Busietta now claim that the evidence in their client’s possession shows that he was acting on Dr Kimberley’s instructions. The assertion has been dismissed as out of hand by her lawyer Giannella de Marco.

But e-mails published last month by The Sunday Times of Malta show Mr Zammit receiving detailed feedback from Dr Kimberley on what he should say and write to lobbyists in Brussels.

Dr Kimberley, who had acted as the local representative for Swedish Match in Malta, always insisted with investigators that she had washed her hands of the whole affair after Mr Zammit allegedly asked for the €60 million on January 13, 2012.

I trust you followed up the e-mail with a phone call to explain to her as we discussed

However, e-mails from Feb­ruary and March of that year indicate that Dr Kimberley had partnered with Mr Zammit in a second lobbying effort – the one which eventually led the Swedish Tobacco company to file a report with the EU, triggering the OLAF investigation and subsequent Maltese court case.

More significantly, the e-mails appear to show Dr Kimberley dictating the wording of the correspondence which Dr Zammit eventually sent to the snus lobbyists in Brussels and which has been presented as evidence against him both by Maltese police and OLAF investigators.

In one e-mail dated March 15, Dr Kimberley even chided Mr Zammit for leaving the subject line of an e-mail exactly as he had received it from her husband. “Mela you left the title of e-mail ‘copy/past proposal’???,” she wrote. “I trust you followed up the e-mail with a phone call to explain to her as we discussed.”

She then proceeded to suggest the wording of an e-mail he should send to the European Smokeless Tobacco Council. Mr Zammit did just that, and forwarded the message practically unchanged, but in his name.

Dr Kimberley’s role as a witness has not been straightforward. In testimony that she had given last April, she contradicted a statement given by the prosecution at the beginning of the proceedings.

When Mr Zammit was first arraigned, the prosecution argued against him being given bail on the basis of a claim – which they said came from Dr Kimberley – that she had been blackmailed over what to say in court.

Four months later, however, Dr Kimberley testified that she had never been threatened in connection with the court case and that the only threats she had received came from her former lover Iosif Galea and were related to their relationship ending.

Similarly, OLAF chief Giovanni Kessler, who led the EU investigation, denied a claim made by Dr Kimberley on the witness stand that he had told her to “fear John Dalli” when she was being interrogated.

“... I absolutely deny it, strongly,” Mr Kessler had told Times of Malta in a telephone interview.

mmicallef@timesofmalta.com

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