That’s the trouble when you’re Swedish: you don’t know who’s who in Malta

Published: October 31, 2012 at 11:23am

The Times have picked up the story about Gayle Kimberley and her involvement in this unpleasant imbroglio, telling us that she is the third person mentioned by the prime minister as being under investigation by the police here in Malta (the other two are John Dalli and Silvio Zammit).

In this report (see link below) Dr Kimberley is described as “the whistleblower” who told Swedish Match, for whom she was (ostensibly) a consultant that Silvio Zammit had asked for a bribe and that Dalli more or less said that he could overturn the snus ban but that it would be “political suicide”.

She also said that Zammit had asked for the bribe after Dalli left the room (really slick, my goodness – like a cheap film).

I’m sorry, but I can’t understand how this makes Dr Kimberley a whistleblower. A whistleblower is somebody who reports this kind of thing to the authorities, and not a consultant who tells the company that’s paying her to lobby that a middleman has asked for a bribe.

That’s not whistleblowing. That’s reporting a request back to your boss, and then it’s up to your boss to deal with it, either by taking up the bribe offer or blowing the whistle on it.

There is no indication that Dr Kimberley made any moral judgement, and in that situation, if she did indeed hold any moral position, she should have bailed out immediately to protect her name, her integrity, her career and even her warrant.

As things stand, it doesn’t look like she was anything other than the go-between for a EUR60 million bribe request, taking Zammit’s message to her paymasters at Swedish Match.

And unfortunately, given the way things are panning out, it isn’t even clear who her paymasters actually were.

Swedish Match themselves are quoted in today’s report in The Times as saying that they don’t know how Silvio Zammit got into the mix, that they’re not the ones who brought him in.

Now we’re told that the police are looking at the same thing.

Well, it’s screamingly obvious, isn’t it. Silvio Zammit is in bed with Iosif Galea – metaphorically speaking, of course. Galea helps Zammit with his business, and Zammit takes a hot lunch to him at his office every day, like a village wife. Galea is an official of the Lotteries & Gaming Authority and a full-time employee there.

Gayle Kimberley, too, was a full-time employee of the Lotteries & Gaming Authority until she left its employment last June, but the LGA retained her services as an external consultant. Dr Kimberley and Iosif Galea were office colleagues and also close confidantes.

Iosif Galea has been very close to John Dalli for some years, and he is likely to have been the one who brought Dalli into contact with Zammit in the first place.




19 Comments Comment

  1. Roughjustice says:

    What i want to know is why and on what basis Swedish Match engaged this young female lawyer.

  2. Luigi says:

    Methaphorically speaking?

  3. dudu says:

    Charles J Buttigieg – Wed 31-Oct-2012, 08:05
    On 28 October DCG reproduced a picture which was uploaded on Fb showing Iosif Galea,Silvio Zammit and John Dalli in Rome. The Comment was ‘Ajma x 3 assassini dawn.’ Is Silvio Debono contemplating Court Action against DCG too?

    http://www.maltastar.com/dart/20121030-silvio-zammit-pulcinell-court-case

    [Daphne – Very disingenuous. This from a man who is forever on Facebook and knows exactly who wrote that comment. As if I would have spelled assassini with one S or used a smiley icon.]

    • bystander says:

      Do I understand this correctly, two Moviment Graffitti activists are accused of calling Silvio Zammit ‘Pulcinell’ (Mr Punch) and the police are prosecuting them?

      Would calling him simply ugly motherf*cker have been acceptable?

      • john says:

        Does Rowan Atkinson know about this?

        I would have thought that the Graffiti couple should be prosecuted for manifestly understating their case.

  4. Silvio says:

    The Dalli affair seems to be developing into what our friend Dr. Emy Bezzina likes to call:
    “Criek ta’ crieki go crieki ta’ crieki”.

    So now they are three, who next?

  5. Evarist Saliba says:

    Unfortunately, some journalists are too loose with the words they write, using them for effect rather than accurate reporting. The word “whistleblower” is one of the words so abused, as in this case.

  6. bystander says:

    If 60 million was taking the piss, I wonder what figure they might have got away with.

    Maybe half a million?

  7. TROY says:

    Whistleblower my arse, Nixonblower more like it.

  8. francis aka chico says:

    Why all the damned fuss about snus? I used to take snus when I lived in Sweden and I didn’t like it at all.

    It’s messy and leaves a trail of brownish powder all over the carpet, and with a girlfriend like the one I had, gorgeous as she was, that meant no sex for the weekend, meaning a poor Maltese 24-year-old having to spend Saturday night watching Dallas with Swedish subtitles and feeling sorry for himself or watching the snow falling from the kitchen window, which was the next best thing (after sex that is) – at least it happened quite regularly.

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