Former European Commissioner John Dalli has lashed out at the EU’s anti-fraud agency, accusing it of “clutching at straws” in the wake of new evidence that has emerged in the case of his 2012 forced resignation.

The Sunday Times of Malta yesterday revealed that, according to two witnesses who work for the Commission, Mr Dalli had enquired about lifting the ban on smokeless tobacco – snus – at the same time that his former canvasser Silvio Zammit allegedly asked for a €60 million bribe to secure this outcome.

They are trying to wiggle out of the obvious conclusions

The agency (OLAF), which investigated the matter, sent their testimonies to the Attorney General, who has in turn passed on the evidence to the police.

In a statement yesterday, Mr Dalli said OLAF assumed he could only have discussed snus with Mr Zammit but in fact he had a number of meetings about it with ministers of the Swedish government and Swedish MEPs “who were aggressively pressing for the liberalisation of the product”.

At the time he and members of his staff were concluding all aspects of the proposal for a revised Tobacco Directive.

“I could have asked for legal clarity on the issue from my services as it is my practice to follow up on my meetings,” he said.

The concluding meeting with his services on the revision of the directive took place on February 28, 2012, he added.

All this had been well documented and, if OLAF had acted with a “shred of decency”, it would have easily found it out.

He questioned why OLAF had brought up this evidence at this particular moment, adding that, contrary to all procedures, he had never been confronted with this statement before.

The former commissioner has persistently denied claims of wrongdoing and has pointed a finger of blame at the tobacco industry, accusing it of conspiring against him.

“OLAF, and their collaborators in Malta, are clutching at straws to try to wiggle out of the obvious conclusions being reached by all objective observers, that a fraud was perpetuated against me,” Mr Dalli said yesterday.

The witnesses who work for the Commission were interviewed as part of a second probe into Mr Dalli, this time related to a number of undeclared trips to the Bahamas, which he said were related to charity work.

This testimony gives a new twist to the original investigation which led to Mr Zammit being charged in court.

But Mr Dalli yesterday said this “new twist” was in fact included in a statement given to OLAF by snus maker Swedish Match representative Johan Gabrielsson on September 19, 2012.