Former EU Commissioner John Dalli is still refusing to lift the lid on his charity work in The Bahamas, where he spent a weekend two days after his former canvasser Silvio Zammit was interviewed by the EU’s anti-fraud agency Olaf.

Mr Dalli was made to resign from his appointment as EU Health Commissioner after the Olaf report found “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” that Mr Dalli had behaved unethically in his dealings with tobacco lobbyists.

Mr Dalli visited The Bahamas again the following week, shortly before his own interview with Olaf. He refused to say how long this second trip was for.

“I went to the Bahamas. So what? People go to Lichtenstein. People go to Geneva. People go to Zurich. I mean, this is where the money is, ok, not just The Bahamas,” Mr Dalli said in an interview with our sister paper The Malta Independent.

He denied any dealings with banks or any other financial institutions during his first trip to The Bahamas. Asked to explain the urgency of his weekend trip to The Bahamas – which is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean – Mr Dalli said that he “needed to have some information at that time.

“People were going to go away for a long time and I needed to have some information. But that is another issue which we will resolve... Olaf has found nothing, I can tell you this because I have a letter from Olaf. Olaf has found nothing wrong with The Bahamas.”

Mr Dalli refused to hand over a copy of this letter citing “confidentiality” and he denied going to The Bahamas in order to open or close a bank account.

“You are making conjectures that my signature was needed for something. My signature was not needed for anything because I did not do anything in the Bahamas. Ok? I did not discuss money in the Bahamas, I didn’t meet any financial institutions or any employee of a financial institutions. Nothing,” Mr Dalli said.

He called it a “complete lie” that he spoke of “moving millions to the Bahamas” while he was there.

Asked how he was fit to fly thousands of miles to The Bahamas yet shortly afterwards was unable to fly to Malta due to “psycho-social” problems, Mr Dalli said the problems began after his resignation from the EU Commission.

 

Part one of the interview can be read in tomorrow’s edition of The Malta Independent.