John Dalli took Nationalist Party and Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil to task yesterday over his alleged ‘friendship’ with OLAF chief Giovanni Kessler, levelling a number of accusations against him in a statement.
In a statement in reaction, Dr Busuttil hit back hard.
“It seems that for John Dalli, betraying his own party and causing untold damage to Malta’s reputation in Brussels is not enough. He now wants to fabricate lies about me,” said the PN Leader.
“Let me make this clear. My so-called friendship’ with Giovanni Kessler, the director-general of OLAF, is a figment of John Dalli’s imagination. Still less did I ever attend the same ‘clubs’ or ‘groups’ as Mr Kessler, as John Dalli alleges.
“I spoke to Mr Kessler for the first time ever last week, when I happened to take the same flight as him to Brussels. He was returning to Brussels after giving evidence in Court in Malta, whereas I was flying to Brussels to attend the EPP Summit.
“If John Dalli wants to descend deeper into public embarrassment and continue to live a lie, he is free to do so. But he should not draw me into his lies.”
The following is Mr Dalli’s full statement, as released yesterday:
“So Simon Busuttil and Giovanni Kessler are very good friends. Simon and Giovanni are on a first-name basis and close enough for Giovanni to cross the barrier between business and economy class in an aeroplane to go and talk to Simon. This brings to mind the interpretation of “close” friendship in Giovanni’s report.
“For transparency’s sake, Simon should enlighten the Maltese public.
1. How was this relationship struck and nurtured?
a. Were they in contact in Official Business?
b. Do they attend the same “clubs”?
c. Are they members of the same “groups”
2. Whether this friendship was of long duration or was it a relationship that developed recently?
a. Did this close friendship exist when Kessler took upon himself to conduct the investigation of the Swedish Match Allegations?
b. Were Simon and Giovanni such close friends when the Malta Police were being pressurised by the Office of the Prime Minister in December 2012 to take action against me at all costs? (as reported in the MaltaToday of 16 December 2012)?
c. Where Simon and Giovanni such close friends when Giovanni was advising a Swedish Match employee who is one of the main actors of the setup against me to continue to spread a false story not to disturb the investigation in Malta?
d. Were Simon and Giovanni such close friends when Simon embarked on a massive campaign of political interference accusing the Prime Minister (not on facts but on suspicion – as is his style) of interfering in my regard. This was an overt attempt to intimidate the police and to continue the hate campaign against me?
e. Were Simon and Giovanni such close friends when Giovanni gave an interview to a Croatian Newspapers repeating Simon’s diatribes of political interference? In fact, this Croatian piece was prominently reproduced in Simon’s newspaper even if they said that the origin was Hungarian (I wonder who translated the piece for them!!!).
f. Were Simon and Giovanni such close friends when Kessler collected the false evidence of Joanna Darmanin and Paola Duarte, and decided to send it to the Police in Malta without (in his own words) checking it or investigating it. When Giovanni had said that he had sent information to the police, Simon put on his crusading armour and accused the police of breaking European Law for not acting on this information.
3. Can Simon – or Giovanni for that matter – give us details of the meetings they had since Giovanni was appointed DG OLAF, the context of the meetings, and whether minutes were kept of these meetings?”