More on Silvio Zammit’s under-the-counter ‘snus’ racket
You know, it’s a good thing my international, worldwide network of spies (IWNS) includes Swedish expats in Malta.
So, for a box of snus which retails at 20SEK (about €2.33) in Sweden, you’d pay €5 at Peppi’s kiosk. For other kinds of snus, you’d pay €6-7.
At some point, he got caught by customs officers and had a consignment of snus confiscated, so he put up the price to €10 per box because of higher risk and reduced supply.
Zammit wouldn’t have been able to buy the snus direct from the producer, because of the export ban, so he probably got it from a middleman or retailer and then pushed up the price accordingly.
Now bear in mind that where this little snus racket was going on at Peppi’s kiosk, EU Health Commissioner John Dalli was holding meetings at the tables outside (you can’t describe them as constituency meetings, because he was no longer a politician in Malta), and that he had meetings there with Zammit himself.
Even if he was not part of the snus racket and not aware of it, even the most Sicilian of Maltese people should be able to understand that this in itself would have been a resignation matter had the appropriate persons or the Brussels-based media got wind of it.
Silvio Zammit was/is one of Dalli’s fixers. You can’t be EU Health Commissioner while your fixer, with whom you are in regular contact, breaks the export ban on snus and sells it illegally on your home turf.
Note that while all the friendly media to whom John Dalli has granted ‘exclusive interviews’ have asked him, conveniently, whether he knew what Zammit was up to, not one of them asked him how often he met Zammit, spoke to him over the telephone and emailed him.
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Maybe this (sale of snus) is what Silvio meant when he declared to be a lobbyist.
And note, too, that no one asked John Dalli why, if he was so sure that Silvio Zammit had been carrying on behind his back and he had the email to prove it, he didn’t immediately fire off a statement saying that he was going to sue Zammit for misrepresenting him.
Because no intelligent person would be so stupid, and so rash, as to commence legal proceedings knowing that he would have to depend had no proof other than the hostile OLAF and its mysterious and inadequate circumstantial evidence.
So Silvio Zammit was probably earning a good buck from his illegal snus operation at Peppi’s, but demanded €60 million to have the ban on the sale of snus outside Sweden lifted, effectively wiping the need for his smuggling operation to exist.
I guess he’s good at maths and probably worked out how many snus packets he would have to sell under the counter to put €60 million together.
Can anyone enlighten me why snus is banned? I assume it is a health hazard, but why is there a derogation in Sweden about this if it is dangerous?
[Daphne – For pretty much the same reason that we had derogations on bird-shooting in Malta, except that those were temporary because the birds were not ours, but the Swedes are free to kill themselves with their traditional product.]
Can somebody tell me how the Swedish suppliers got to know Silvio Zammit? Surely they first approached John Dalli who obviously gave them his contact details.
As far as I can tell, the way they got to know him is because he went to them with his offer to set things right for them in exchange for a little consideration.
Dalli stated that he sent a judicial letter to Silvio in August. Had his meetings with Silvio at his (Peppi’s) Kiosk stopped after that?
[Daphne – He did not send him a judicial letter. Once we discovered that isn’t true, he’s now claiming he sent him a straightforward ‘ittra b’avukat.’]
Snus is big business in Sweden, nearly ever Swede I meet (and i meet a lot) uses it so 60 million is pennies to ask from Swedish Match, not “fantasmagorical”