Former European Commissioner John Dalli has reacted to statements made by Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil in Parliament yesterday, saying that he should be upholding the rights of Maltese citizens and not those of OLAF head Giovanni Kessler

Mr Dalli chose to call Dr Bussuttil as Dr BS all the way throughout the statement, being reproduced in full below.

"Like Don Quixote, Dr Busuttil Simon galloped to charge at his pet hates.

He said in Parliament that Commissioner of Police Zammit has broken EU Law by not collaborating with OLAF.

I would first want to declare that I know absolutely nothing about this issue, but as an interested party in the debate, since I am the prime target of Dr. BS’s attack, I would like to ask this expert of all EU laws, procedures and initiatives (especially where funds are involved), whether he has some insider information from OLAF or the Commission, with whom he has been collaborating so generously, of the requests that were made by OLAF to the local police.

If he does not, who is he to stand in judgement from a point of ignorance?  Or does he expect every one of us to stand at such awe of the EU institutions that we simply bend over and take whatever they chose to dish at us?

I remind Dr. BS that this also happened back in July 2012 when Dr. Giovanni Kessler invented a baseless suspicion of misappropriation of European funds by a local pizzeria to give him the pretext to come to Malta to interview a Maltese Citizen which he in fact had no legal base to do.  To be able to do this, Dr. GK had to give, as DG of OLAF to himself, as the lead investigator in this case, permission to change the scope of the investigation twice in five days. This after he had made a hurried assessment to launch the investigation only a few hours after he allegedly received the allegations of Swedish Match from the Commission.  Dr. GK was severely criticised for this by the Supervisory Committee appointed by the European Parliament to scrutinise the actions of OLAF.

Dr. BS was a member of the European Parliament at the time.   What did he do when this information was coming out?  Did he object to this and other gross breaches by OLAF?  Or did he sulk when the EPP decided to put pressure on the Commission so that all the facts about my case come out?

The Director of AFCOS Malta at the time, who also has the authority and the obligation to protect Maltese Citizens against abuses by EU institution, did not check the legal base of the investigation Dr.GK was conducting in Malta.  As we know from the courts, she did not even check whether the proper notice of an interview was given and allowed a forged pre-dated written note to be given instead," Mr Dalli said.

Dr. BS should be upholding the rights of the Maltese citizen and not the abuse of the likes of Dr. GK.