The EU anti-fraud agency, OLAF, has shifted responsibility on to local authorities over whether it was legal to obtain the phone records of Maltese suspects investigated in the Dalligate probe.

“The competent national authorities are responsible for ensuring the legality of any activity they have undertaken following a request for information received from OLAF,” the agency said.

The authority in this case was the Internal Audit and Investigations Department, which was then headed by Rita Schembri, who being investigated for alleged abuse of power.

The statement came in response to 150 questions tabled by MEPs over its handling of the investigation involving former European commissioner John Dalli. The phone records are at the centre of questions raised about the legality of OLAF’s methods in its probe.

In particular, the agency’s own watchdog asked whether OLAF had the legal right to obtain phone records of Mr Dalli’s former canvasser, Silvio Zammit.

These records and those of Mr Dalli – which the agency had a right to access as he was a functionary of an EU institution – provided the central evidence that OLAF presented against Mr Dalli to show some calls between the two coincided with moments where Mr Zammit allegedly asked for money.

In its replies to MEPs, OLAF pointed out that it had the right to request information on suspects from its counterpart in any member state but that it was the responsibility of such local authorities to verify whether it could legally pass the information on.

Competent authorities responsible for ensuring the legality of activity

In a statement accompanying the replies, the European Commission also said it could not comment on the legality of OLAF’s investigative action, saying it was a matter for the courts to decide, not political institutions.

The voluminous replies will now be carefully examined by the members of the overseeing Budgetary Control Committee, whose MEPs were among the most critical of the agency’s handling of the case.

Some of them have even called for the resignation of OLAF director general Giovanni Kessler over the matter.

The former Italian magistrate has argued that only the courts could declare whether they had acted lawfully or not.

This development in the Dalligate saga comes after Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit said there was not enough evidence to prove a criminal case against Mr Dalli.