Now the response is “Ahh, John Dalli”.

It does not change the position but I think that the Swedish company is being made out to be the pure virgin or even the hero in this saga when I think they are as guilty as the other party if there were any dealings going on.

If I understood Kessler correctly he seems to acknowledge that the Swedish company had initially started offering a bribe and then felt it was being asked for too much.

He put it very diplomatically but even the journalists understood what he was saying and in fact asked him how they could be sure that the swedish company was not trying to entrap the commissioner.

The fact that the Swedish company reported the case does not completely absolve them. For the Vice-President of Swedish Match to start speaking about zero-tolerance and how the Nordics are less susceptible is a bit out of place. I do not know all the facts but I’m basing what I say on what has been said so far.

I hate it when someone uses race, region etc to make a point its not true that we Maltese or us Mediterranean are more corruptible or more tolerant to corruption that is a blanket statement which is like saying all Muslims are terrorists. It’s racism in disguise.

Where’s Kev when you need him?

You should see what happened when he started tampering with Nutella. He managed to unify Italy.

And Sargas?

It seems that Mr. Patrik Hildingsson has never heard about Sargas.

And good thing too. Let Gustavus Adolphus march on us Southerners hanging on to the Holy Roman Empire’s coat-tails, I say. I, for one, would welcome our Scandinavian Protestant overlords.

Plausus Noricus, what. Feel the power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d4vesbIEPU

This makes the Swedish company not only corrupt but also cheap probably thinking that a Maltese person should be easily bribed maybe for a few euros. All those who think that corruption is only a Mediterranean trait are wrong. Corruption is everywhere.

[Daphne – How does that change the position of Silvio Zammit and John Dalli?]

The Swedes took over the Holy Roman Empire, and all the rest are sinners.

When one looks at the historically proven Swedish corruption cases, they never went for peanuts, and 60M Eur is peanuts for them, seeing they were up to loose 400M Eur per year from their tobacco business profits.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/patrik-hildingsson/6/b9a/671

I really cannot understand why it feels that some Maltese who are discussing this very unsavoury event are shifting the blame by saying it is entrapment?

This is clearly the suspects’ wrongdoings, otherwise how was Dalli in possession of the email?

Why would Swedish Match go through finding out about Zammit, manage to instigate him too contact them himself (do they use mind control in Sweden?) and then immediately alert OLAF about the request for money to set a meeting with the Commissioner?

Also if Dalli knew about this dealing why didn’t he contact OLAF in the first place and alert them?

I mean, at least one would expect such a conduct from a law abiding citizen let alone an EU Commissioner in charge of a branch of EU policy. What about the hacking episode a couple of months ago? What was that about? Could it be that it was some kind of decoy by Dalli to fall back upon if things ended up badly?

What is the definition of entrapment? Someone is encouraged by an official (government or otherwise) to commit a crime. Who made the first approach and who made the offer?

What bugs me the most is that there are many more questions that one could ask by which the hypothesis of entrapment could be eliminated however some people will believe anything in order to deviate from the real problem.

By trying to shift the blame or by trying to find excuses or invent scenarios that aren’t true what one does is accepting such conduct.