Former European commissioner John Dalli yesterday claimed his ex-boss, Manuel Barroso, suggested he should “forget” the EU’s Tobacco Directive, a piece of legislation meant to curtail smoking across Europe.

He took the witness stand in the case against his former canvasser Silvio Zammit, who is denying a series of corruption charges over an alleged attempt to influence the review of the directive, when it was Mr Dalli’s responsibility.

Mr Dalli stressed yesterday he had never discussed changing the directive with Mr Zammit, nor had he talked about money in any context.

Most of all, he pressed the view that he was forced out of his Brussels post over the work he was doing to introduce tighter controls on the tobacco industry, and described the whole affair as a set-up.

Mr Dalli said he remained steadfast in his position on cigarettes, despite the meeting with Mr Barroso, adding that he was backed up by statistics on the harm they could do.

He said Mr Barroso told him the Commission’s legal services were having a lot of problems with the directive’s review.

In this connection, he referred to the role played by Michel Petite, the ex-director-general of the European Commission’s legal services, a role similar to the Attorney General in Malta.

He said that when Mr Petite came on board “decisions began to change”, adding that the former director general had signed an agreement with (tobacco producers) Philip Morris for them to give millions to the EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF.

I am here to answer all questions

Then Mr Petite left the Commission and took a job at Clifford Chance, a lobbying firm partly owned by Phillip Morris.

The move, which Mr Dalli called “the worst case of revolving doors in Europe”, had earned Mr Petite a nomination in the 2008 Worst EU Lobby Awards, which is designed to highlight excessive corporate influence in Brussels.

His name reappeared in relation to this scandal when representatives from Swedish tobacco and snus firm Swedish Match sought Mr Petite’s advice in 2012 – at this time he was acting as a tobacco lobbyist – on how they should proceed to report that they had been asked for a bribe from Mr Zammit.

The story of Mr Dalli is intertwined with that of the 49-year-old Zammit in this case.

He was forced to resign after OLAF concluded, after an investigation, that Mr Zammit had requested a €60 million bribe from Swedish Match in return for lifting an EU-wide ban on snus – an orally consumed form of tobacco that can only be sold in Sweden.

OLAF had claimed that Mr Dalli was probably aware that the money claim had been made and did nothing about it, but did not suggest that criminal charges be issued against him.

It did recommend that Mr Zammit be charged, along with a lawyer acting on behalf of Swedish Match, Gayle Kimberley.

However, the police only charged Mr Zammit, who is pleading not guilty to charges of bribery and trading in influence.

While his wife and daughter looked on from the public gallery, Mr Dalli was asked a single question yesterday by Police Inspector Jonathan Ferris: “Who is John Dalli today?” before speaking at liberty for more than an hour about what he knew about the case.

Clutching a plastic green file containing notes, Mr Dalli said he was there “to answer all questions” when cautioned by Magistrate Anthony Vella that he had the right not to testify in case he incriminated himself.

He referred to the investigations that were carried out by the Maltese police, led by former police commissioner John Rizzo, after OLAF concluded its investigation in October 2012.

He said Mr Rizzo was shouting at him incessantly and taking liberties with him, calling him “John-John” and “Johnny” during his interrogation, in spite of the fact he had symptoms indicating that he was not feeling well.

Mr Dalli also discussed what he claimed to be highly suspicious conversations, chats, that had been made about the OLAF investigation before the probe was made public, supporting the idea of a conspiracy.

Mr Dalli claimed that when he asked Mr Rizzo to investigate the matter, he was ignored and when his lawyer asked for explanations, Mr Rizzo told him: “Do you think I am going to investigate the computers of the Office of the Prime Minister?” – the place where Mr Dalli claimed the communications came from.

Going back to the developments in Brussels before the scandal emerged, Mr Dalli highlighted that his work on the Tobacco Directive was stalled from within.

Some months after work on the directive was concluded in March 2012, Catherine Day, the secretary general of the European Commission, sent OLAF a series of allegations made by Swedish Match.

The company alleged – among other things – ­ that Mr Zammit had asked for €60 million in a meeting in Malta in February that year.

Eventually, August 22 was chosen as the launch date for the directive.

However, it was put off at the request of Ms Day and postponed until September 23 and then again to October 16.

Then, on October 11, Giovanni Kessler, director-general of OLAF, sent a note to somebody who was handling the case file and the subject on this note was “dead body”. These, Mr Dalli said, were all “big coincidences”.

On October 14, somebody from OLAF phoned Swedish Match and told it to prepare for a press conference on October 17.

And then, on October 16, he was asked to attend a meeting with Mr Barroso where he was told about the investigation and later resigned after being given no other option by Mr Barroso.

The case continues.