As I said earlier, it had to be OLAF to get him at last
Noel Grima, writing in The Malta Independent on Sunday today:
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Fast forward to January 2008. At around 9am on a Sunday morning, I got a phone call from an irate Mr Dalli regarding a story we carried that day (David Lindsay and I had found the story and David wrote it). It regarded some $20 million of the savings of many US persons whose funds, which were supposed to be invested in the Bermudas, somehow ended up in Malta.
That phone call was the first intimation Mr Dalli was somehow involved. He argued we were doing a lot of harm because we ‘wrote things without checking them.’
An hour later, I received a call from an equally irate American guy, who was directly implicated in the company we mentioned. Then he passed on the phone to another person, who, to my utter surprise turned out to be Labour MP Noel Farrugia.
Now that Sunday was the day Alfred Sant returned to his party after his serious illness and the party had organised a big do at CNL. Yet Mr Farrugia was not there, but at a Floriana office.
They insisted we go in for a meeting the next day but I had some problems with my car and Mr Farrugia himself came for me at Zebbiegħ, where we were living then.
When we got to Floriana, we found a number of canvassers lounging outside, and inside we found Mr Dalli sitting at one end of a big table and Mr Farrugia at the other. The American guy was in the middle and next to him was a lawyer from Munich who treated us to a lecture in ethics in journalism, as he saw them.
Court action regarding this issue is still ongoing. The money has still, to my knowledge, not been recovered and there is much more to this.
Anyway, I was flabbergasted, and while I have never written about this till today, I made sure that people who matter got to know about this unlikely and suspicious combination, from people close to the prime minister, to US Ambassador Molly Bordonaro, to the high echelons of the Labour Party – although I did not speak to Joe Muscat, I know from comments he made to a third party, that he knew all about it.
(…)
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Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=152256
Which is why I think the PM did the right thing to propose him for the position of EU Commissioner in 2010.
Now all the world knows what he’s been up to, as reported by OLAF.
How depressing.
No one in Malta has the guts to take this man to task so they shunt him off to the European Commission to let them do all the dirty work.
Dalli obtained 5000 votes in 2008 and, in a democracy where MPs are selected by the electorate, votes mean power. Dalli has long been powerful because of his popular support and you cannot just kick out such a man.
Dalli is a proven liar, as we have seen by his claims of a police report which then turned out to be untrue. Why is anyone bothering to listen to him, let alone giving any consideration to what he says?
You can address that question to Joseph Muscat. Labour media always eager to hear what Dalli has to say.
No way.
With that kind of information (assuming that the people close to the prime minister did tell him what Noel Grima told them) he should never have even considered proposing John Dalli as Malta’s EU Commissioner.
My suspicion is that the PM is asking right now who these “people close to him” were. But will he fire them?
OLAF did a very neat job indeed.
Wow. Ehm . . .
I am dumbfounded, speechless.
Obviously, I know very little – just what dcg and the local media disclose and I already feel (I said here before that I never knew who JDBA was) that this person is, using a Maltese expression, habba hazina.
So why then, assuming that the PM knows much more about this guy than stupid me knows, did LG gave him such role? Is it poor judgement or was it a matter of let us give him enough rope to hang himself, knowing what kind of person he is.
Like a child who just found out how babies are made, I feel I have lost faith in everyone in this lurid, dark and criminal circle (or is it circus?) known as politics.
Min jipprova jiggieled il-korruzzjoni f’dan il-pajjiz, bhalma prova Dr Gonzi, jsib hitan gholjin, ghax l-oppozizzjoni dejjem kienet fuq in-naha ta’ min jabbuza biex taghtih kenn. M’hemmx ghalfejn naghti ezempji.
[Daphne – You don’t try to fight corruption by sending a corrupt person as Malta’s nominee in the European Commission. Even if you are in a situation where the person’s character is seriously in doubt, and you have no proof, you shouldn’t do it. The prime minister sent him there to get him off his back, and inevitably, he has been hoist by his own petard. It was BOUND to happen, and hindsight has nothing to do with it. There was enough there for foresight to come into play.]
With respect, I don’t agree with you on this. I think that in politics sometimes you have to do what circumstances allow you to do and not necessarily what you want to do.
[Daphne – I’m afraid I can’t see it your way, and I am not talking about the morality or ethics of that decision (though that certainly should have been a consideration). John Dalli as EU Commissioner was a bad accident waiting to happen. Sending him there to get him out of the cabinet was a very high risk strategy with great odds of blowing up in everyone’s face. Would there have been greater risks with him in cabinet? No – because those risks would have been contained in Malta. The damage that this has done to Malta is great. Also, sending Dalli to Brussels did not get him out of the PM’s hair. It made him worse – and that could easily have been foreseen. In the cabinet, he was obliged to compromise to a greater or lesser extent. Freed of any such obligation, he became worse, appearing on Super One TV and collaborating with Labour in a blatant fashion. This too could have been foreseen. You don’t use the yardstick you would use for a normal person to measure individuals like Dalli, Pullicino and Debono. You have to assess them by the yardstick of abnormality.]
The PM had to endure all stabbings from Dalli when the Zahra report saga came to an end. You cannot just blame the PM without considering the weight of this evil guy and his evil accolytes. It was obvious that behind the renegades there was a stronger, unscrupulous hand.
[Daphne – The prime minister of an EU member state does not take decisions such as these in order to protect himself. He takes them to protect the country. When the choice came between protecting himself and protecting the country, in this case the prime minister chose the former and convinced himself it was the latter. That was his error of judgement. An indecent person like Dalli, aged 60+ and set in his ways, cannot be counted upon to behave decently or correctly. Those who refuse to learn the lessons of life from human behaviour deserve, quite frankly, all they get.]
In my humble opinion I think nobody ever guessed he would try to do the kind of thing he is being accused of.
Maybe the prime minister though Dalli would be satisfied with the prestigious position he was entrusted with which, presumably, came with a very substantial paycheck too.
Tania, you mean well.
However you are also rather naive.
Also please note that the guy is not being accused.
He has been found guilty by the relevant organ of the European Union following an intensive investigation.
As far as the Commission is concerned this is the end of the story.
In fact the commissioner from Malta is Tonio Borg.
This pending approval, as always.
Tania, you must be a day old ie born yesterday. This is the guy who, when asked what he was doing with his brother Bastjan running around in the ministerial car whilst on an official visit to Libya said, without turning a hair “giving him a lift”.
I can’t think why it took so long for others to cotton on. I had seen through Dalli way back – in the early 90s, when I still had to bribe Customs officials to get normal industrial supplies into the country. He was minister responsible.
Yes he had a handsome pay check and more.
Imma darba hanzir dejjem hanzir. What an absolutely disgusting man.
Daphne is perfectly right.
By sending Dalli to Brussels the PM covered his arse and helped f**k an entire country’s reputation internationally.
The very high risk of this saga ending up the way it did was known to all and sundry.
If this is not gross error of judgement, I do not know what is.
X’tahwid!
PS.
Sab kappell jigih.
Naqra ohra u jghidulna li hu imxierek mal-mazuni.
Ilni ma naqra tahwid bhal dan zmien twil.
Nahseb li bhala gurnalist Noel Grima kellu jghidilna wkoll x’kien qed jigri dak iz-zmien. Probabilment Gonzi ma qal xejn ghal-istess raguni tas-sur Grima.
Mhux facli li gurdien idendel il-golgol m’ghonq qattus li jkun dejjem imgewwah.
Oh look.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121021/local/government-urged-to-continue-chadwick-lakes-rehabilitation.442060
And is that Cyrus on Noel Farrugia’s right?