Brussels, 22/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - Was José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, a pawn in the hands of the European tobacco industry when he threw out EU Health Commissioner John Dalli on 16 October 2013, accusing him of corruption?
The Greens at the European Parliament have a recording on which Swedish Match, a Swedish chewable tobacco (“snus”) company over which the case arose, recognises that OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office, had asked it for evidence about Dalli although OLAF was perfectly aware that the evidence was false. When Barroso announced Dalli's so-called resignation, he refused to publish the OLAF investigative report but said the proof was solid. Since then, any request by the European Parliament to verify the accusations against Dalli have met with a refusal.
MEP Inge Grässle, the EPP spokesperson on the European Parliament's budgetary control committee, demanded on Thursday 22 March that the head OLAF, Giovanni Kessler, should resign following submission of new evidence by the Greens/EFA at the EP. Grassle said that two days ago, the OLAF surveillance committee, speaking to the EP, had slammed serious violation of fundamental rights - the unauthorised recording of telephone conversations and encouraging certain witnesses to hold certain conversations with the former commissioner. In addition, she said there was the fact that Swedish Match had been encouraged to make false statements to the European Parliament.
Like Beligum's Bart Staes (Greens/EFA), Grassle is demanding publication of the OLAF committee's report on the Dalli investigation, which has thus far only been submitted to the presidents of the three EU institutions. She said the presidents must stop covering up the violations and everything must be brought to light.
With the EU anti-smoking directive in preparation and Silvio Zammit, a Maltese entrepreneur friend of John Dalli's who is in association with Estoc, a cigarette company lobby, went Stockholm to meet with a representative of Swedish Match, wanting to offer his services as a go-between with the commissioner to win EU authorisation for the sale of snus outside Sweden. The Swedish company says that a deal was struck on 10 February 2012 at a meeting between Dalli, Zammit and a Maltese lawyer, Gayle Kimberley, Swedish Match's contact in Malta: €10million for the Swedish company to meet the European Commission and a further €50 million for authorisation to sell snus in other countries. The accusations of corruption are based on this meeting and a meeting a month earlier between Dalli and Kimberly in Malta, at which the lawyer gave Dalli a three-page document making the argument that snus was not dangerous to health. Dalli has admitted the meeting at which he was given the document, but not the meeting on 10 February.
During a discussion on Wednesday between José Bové (Greens/EFA, France), two representatives of Swedish Match (including the man making the main accusations, Johann Gabrielsonn), the company admitted that they based their corruption accusations solely on what they had been told by Kimberley, but OLAF had told them that the alleged meeting on 10 February had not taken place, Gabrielsonn says on the recording. OLAF had asked the company to not change their accusations or version of the facts in order to facilitate the investigation. In other words, the main evidence is based on lies by Kimberley and lies by OLAF.
OLAF ended its investigation shortly before the new anti-smoking directive (under which snus remains banned) was submitted to the College of Commissioners by John Dalli. The draft directive should have been examined on 23 October, but was postponed. And Maltese commissioner Dalli was sent packing five days earlier. In 2009, Swedish Match set up a joint venture with the world's biggest cigarette comany, Philip Morris International, to oppose the directive. Bové says the case is becoming increasingly suspicious.
On 11 April, the Greens/EFA will hand the Conference of Presidents at the EP a draft proposalfor setting up a special committee on good governance.
On Thursday, OLAF denied any violation of fundamental rights and procedures in its investigation into John Dalli. OLAF said that all the evidence had been collected legally and it says it did not make any illegal recordings of telephone conversations in relation to this case. (LC/transl.fl)