At the time, everyone jumped onto the story. Malta’s European Commissioner for Health, John Dalli, had been accused of asking for a €60 million bribe to lift the ban on Snus and was summarily asked to resign by the EC President Jose Manuel Barroso.

While there seemed to be a lot of testimony that pointed fingers at Mr Dalli, there always seemed to be a missing piece to the puzzle. It just did not add up.

Olaf’s Director, Giovanni Kessler immediately launched an investigation. Mr Dalli always maintained his innocence and fought tooth and nail with the Commission to not get the boot. As it was all unfolding, everyone was very quick to reach judgment and the general feeling seemed to be “there is no smoke without fire”.

But now, all that has been thrown into doubt as the impartiality of Kessler has been put in question by his own supervisors in the summary of a report leaked to the media.  And this not to mention the claims by another ‘involved party’ – Gail Kimberly, who testified in the local courts in a case against Silvio Zammit, about her being grilled by Kessler, only to be taken to lunch with wine afterwards. The supervisors also accuse Olaf of instructing Gayle Kimberley, who is one of the key witnesses in this case, to lie. Last February Ms Kimberley informed Olaf that a meeting in which a person close to Mr Dalli was said to have asked for the bribe, had never taken place. In spite of this Olaf allegedly told her not to disclose this to the wider public - a charge which Mr Kessler’s office denies.

The report, which was supposed to be kept under lock and key in the European Parliament, was compiled by Olaf's supervisory committee, but a  five-page executive summary of this report  has now been leaked.The report accuses Kessler’s office of conducting unlawful interrogations in Malta, intercepting a private telephone conversation, involving the help of Maltese authorities without a proper legal basis and overlooking or rushing checks on the legality of its actions in order to speed up the outcome.

The report also says that Olaf requested from the Maltese authorities itemised telephone bills related to the case, a list of incoming and outgoing telephone calls, as well as the holders or users of other telephone numbers.

Despite being obtaining this data without any legal basis, it was still used in the investigation.   The report states that the illegally-acquired evidence “impaired … in an undue manner important fundamental rights … and breached … numerous data protection provisions”.

The only way to get to the bottom of it all is to make the report public. The government of Malta has the actual report in its possession. As we have already said, something, somewhere, does not add up. As we mentioned months ago, no one can reach judgment on the matter without reading the report, and we always said that in the national interest, as well as the interest of Mr Dalli, that the report should be made public. We re-issue that call. If there was wrong-doing, it should be made public. If Mr Dalli was set up, then it should also be made public. But what is absolutely clear is that the goings on in Olaf and in particular Mr Kessler’s office, also need to be made public.