The leader that appeared yesterday on Times of Malta, entitled Worlds Apart On Ethical Issues, is written from a standpoint of ignorance or dishonesty.
Times of Malta opts to laud José Manuel Barroso’s ethics.
He is the same man who, when elected to the presidency of the European Commission, embarked on a 10-day holiday on a luxury yacht with shipping magnates. Lo and behold, under his presidency the shipping industry was exempted from the carbon tax, thus saving billions of euros.
The host on this trip was Spiro Latsis, a Greek billionaire banker who benefited greatly from the bailout funds paid from our taxes to ‘help’ Greeks. We all know where the Greek citizens ended up.
This is the same Barroso who was planning a holiday on the isle of Skiathos, courtesy of an unnamed friend’s yacht, starting August 21 last year. The media (not Times of Malta, of course) reported that Barroso’s “office refused to say where the president would be, saying it was ‘private’. Just like the last time… And after the story was published, they suddenly stopped being so coy and are now insisting that Barroso will be staying in Portugal, for a few more days.”
This is the same Barroso who did not deign to ensure that the OLAF supervisory committee review the OLAF report even when he admitted under oath that OLAF broke all semblance of independence when they were informing him about the conclusions of their report days before he had earlier stated he had come to know about it. Possibly, the time when he was in Malta not discussing this issue with then Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.
Times of Malta seems not to notice how Barroso has shifted his line by stressing the meetings with lobbyists and forgetting my knowledge of the demand for bribes, which he knows is just a fraudulent conjecture by OLAF director general Giovanni Kessler.
The newspaper does not seem to notice that the European Court of Justice has taken Opinion 2/2012 of the supervisory committee on board. My lawyers affirmed in the hearing that this opinion specifically mentions that my human rights were breached by OLAF. (The reporter of Times of Malta must have missed this).
It should also be noted that even as late as Tuesday, in a CONT committee meeting, the supervisory authority stated that OLAF is refusing to publish thisopinion on their sire and Kessler kept insisting that this opinion should not have been published.
Times of Malta seems to have missed the emphasis made about the very short telephone call between Barroso and Gonzi when the former informed the latter about my termination.
Rather strange when these two affirm that they had never discussed this between them before.
It seems to have missed the warning by one of the judges to the lawyers of the Commission that they would go into all the circumstances of this telephone conversation.
The newspaper also seems to have missed how Barroso and his team tried to stress under oath that he gave me an option to give a full and satisfactory explanation and how this was exposed as a belated invention by the Commission to hide the fact of the forced termination.
How could he have given me this chance when he did not allow me to even see the documents he had in his hands or to seek legal advice?
And, as my lawyer stressed, he never prepared a press release, together with the other two he had already given to the spokespersons services before the meeting, to state that I had given such a full and satisfactory explanation.
Times of Malta seems to have missed... so much more.
The point is not meeting people. The point is how strong one is and how objective one is in one’s contacts
About my meeting with the lobbyist.
If whoever wrote the leader had read the OLAF report objectively, he would have understood that the several meetings quoted by OLAF come down to two.
The first meeting was with Tomas Hammargren, who happened to be the chairman of Estoc (the European Smokeless Tobacco Council), and which took place in August 2010 when I had just started in the Commission.
I did not know who this man was or that his organisation existed before he introduced himself to me. I met him in my swimming trunks in the cafeteria of the Kempinski Hotel, in Gozo where I was holidaying with my family.
The meeting notes penned by Hammargren unilaterally stated that:
I informed him that I should not be talking to him.
I am determined to develop a strong tobacco directive, which will keep young people away from taking on the vice and that will enhance the sustainability of the health system, a position I maintained until the end irrespective of the efforts made by so many politicians (including Barroso) to drop this strong stance.
He can discuss the matter with my services in Brussels to present his issues.
So what was my unethical behaviour? Should I have slapped him in the face and ran away from him? My behaviour over the following months proved that Hammargren did not impress me at all.
The second meeting was with Gayle Kimberly on January 6, 2012. Although Swedish Match had concluded a consultancy agreement with Kimberly, they never registered her as a lobbyist.
Kimberly wrote, in her report to Swedish Match (again unilaterally), that she did not present herself as a representative of Swedish Match. Therefore, I could never have perceived her as a lobbyist.
Can the leader writer explain what level of ethical standards would have made Barroso miss all this?
If the report by Swedish Match to Catherine Day alleging irregularities by me included these meetings, which they had organised, it only proves entrapment. But the report also included the infamous meeting of February 10, 2012, which was admitted to be a lie. (Very much like Joe Zahra and his 2004 report.)
These are the ethical standards of Kessler, Barroso, OLAF and the Commission, which Times of Malta is lauding.
On a local note, Times of Malta takes to task local politicians who are accessible. God forbid that we change our culture and stand aloof of everyone.
I know of politicians who boasted how they met everyone in weddings and funerals. Hats off to them. I know of politicians who spend long hours daily in political ‘clinics’ meeting whoever comes through their doors without conducting a due diligence on him/her. Hats off to them too.
The point is not meeting people. The point is how strong one is and how objective one is in one’s contacts.
The weak should not be in politics.