The devil, Mr Dalli and Mr Balzan, is in the detail
This is the email message which John Dalli and his admirers at Malta Today have brought before us as ‘proof’ that the Swedes made the original approach to Silvio Zammit – you know, out of the blue, and tried to bribe him.
But the devil is in the detail. Look at the subject line. It begins with RE.
RE (as in ‘re’, pronounced ‘ray’, rather than ‘reply’) is what comes up automatically when you REPLY to an email. This means, beyond any doubt, that the email produced by Dalli and Malta Today, and reproduced here, is a reply to an email sent by Silvio Zammit.
For example, if I email you and fill in the subject line with ‘They got the bastard at last’, and you reply, your subject line will be ‘Re They got the bastard at last.’
Try it yourself, and you’ll see.
Within an hour or so of his forced resignation, John Dalli gave a videoed interview to New Europe, at which he already had a copy of this email to Silvio Zammit and produced it for the camera. Exactly how did he get it if he claimed that he had no idea what Silvio Zammit was doing – or rather, that Silvio Zammit is innocent and the Swedes tried to bribe him, which is what he actually did say?
He already had the emails because he knew what was going on. He was almost certainly bcc-ed and that would be how OLAF is certain Dalli knew what was going on.
It wasn’t the Evil Click who checked out his mail-box.
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…to say nothing of the fact that Silvio Zammit appears to be (have been) an established contact for Inge.
(a) Her familarity and informal manner of addressing him give that away, including asking to meet Dalli in the most facile of ways.
(b) His name appears in the Recipient line meaning that his details were included in her address book. If this were a one-off or the first email sent you’d have seen the email address, not the name.
(c) The context is also such that it is evident that this was a reply. In spite of the subject line, Inga wasn’t proposing anything. She was asking for a meeting after she referred to some bad rumours in Brussels. You don’t start talking to a person like that – not unless he already knows what you are talking about.
I mean this is all really so childish. Shouldn’t these things be obvious, and why do they have to be explained?
This all suggests that communication at the time of this email was on-going and in full swing. These two people knew each other well enough to be on a first name basis and the usage of informal banter and the fact that Silvio Zammit was evidently a contact in her address book, are indicative of the converse of what Dalli and Zammit are saying.
They’re lying through their teeth.
I think it’s very clear from the subject line: ” re: proposal” that the original e-mail to the now sender was entitled “proposal” or that a proposal was made earlier. Otherwise the subject would simply be “proposal”. Not so?
It’s also obvious there had been prior communication from the informal “Hi Silvio”.
At the same time, RE does not necessarily mean Silvio made the first move. He could have replied to an email they had sent him previously and the subject line going back and forth would still probably have just a single RE.
[Daphne – And still the point remains the same: Silvio Zammit was not approached out of the blue with an indecent proposal. Might I ask you this – do you actually KNOW Silvio Zammit? I ask because you apparently think he is the sort people might mistake for a lobbyist.]
No, I don’t know him from Adam. The first time I saw his face was in the Sliema council election propaganda and I thought he looked like a total sleazeball in that photo, with his cheezy fat grin.
To my mind, the lobbyist would be Inge Delfosse who wanted to contact Dalli, did a bit of asking around and got hold of Silvio. I could be wrong, of course.
[Daphne – Silvio is the gatekeeper, a la zmien il-Perit Mintoff, when key ministers had a gatekeeper who had to be ‘kept happy’ for access to the Main Man. LOVELY. Now do you understand why what he did was wrong? If what these two were up to isn’t wrong, then neither were all those years of bribing Il-Fusellu for access to Patrick Holland.]
Good point Daphne, that, I think, is one of the unambiguous pieces of circumstantial evidence.
John Dalli made it a point to refer to ‘this Silvio Zammit’ when reading off that email on Kev’s latest preferred source of factual information.
Fancy that, holding meetings with constituents at Silvio’s place and then playing dead.
Daphne, although the frenzy surrounding this abysmal incident will continue to grow, may you allow me a generalization.
I have lived on the rock for almost twenty years, and have witnessed many bewildering and weird incidents. (including a brief stint in prison, due to Sant in 1996-acquitted).
However, 2012 is certainly the most bizarre of all those years.
We have juvenile politicians, on both sides of the house, who have amused and disgusted all of us. A couple of them should be committed. Some are practically illiterate, and are sorely in need of help and an injection of brain material.
Now we have a corrupt (we all knew that) former EU Commissioner who has disgraced himself and our country in the eyes of the world.
If the Mayans have their dates correct, no sweat, these idiots will all be gone. Unfortunately, so will we.
If they’ve screwed up and are the origins of Labourites, we still have a chance.
2013 should be one hell of a year.
Harry Purdie:Thanks for the compliment, calling our country which you decided to come and live in, as ” the rock” !
If you happen to be a British resident, I recall a British soldier singing the song ” Island in the sun” but changing the words as follows:
” This is my island in the sun,
subsidized by the Englishman.
from Marfa ridge down to Marsaxlokk,
It’s a fuc………g great heap of limestone rock !”
You reminded me of that Bristish soldier ! Or was he, you ?
So touchy. And SO out of touch. Calling Malta ‘the rock’ has been commonplace among the Maltese for years.
Then again, you’re humourless and don’t understand irony.
When was this, Privitera? When you were busy sabotaging anti-aircraft shells and selling corned beef on the black market?
Your sort disgust me. Finest generation, they call you. Never was anything more wrongly named.
P.S. Malta IS a rock. Pick up an atlas, and you’ll see.
Not sure I agree with your deduction. If the original title was simply “proposal” the chances are the “P” would have been a capital letter. All letters which should be capitals in that email are capitals so I don’t think they would have got it wrong in the title. Still, by entitling it “proposal” …… and not actually making a proposal ……….. it would appear to be refering to some earlier proposal. No doubt things will become clearer in the coming days.
[Daphne – I repeat: ‘Re’ only comes up when you reply to an email. And no, people don’t necessarily use capital letters, In fact, a quick glance through my inbox right now shows me that very few people do.]
What I’m basically saying is that even if this email included the “Re” it would still imply that it was not the first communication between the parties.
The thing is that if Mr Dalli was indeed BCC-ed on this email, he must have been intentionally BCC-ed by Ms Delfosse herself. Otherwise he could not have received Ms Delfosse’s reply, even if BCC-ed by Mr Zammit in his first email to ESTOC.
[Daphne – There are times when I just wish I could knock my brains out against some wall and have done with it. DO YOU IMAGINE THE EXCHANGE OF EMAILS STOPPED THERE? OF COURSE IT DID NOT. SILVIO ZAMMIT REPLIED TO THAT EMAIL, AND WHEN HE REPLIED, IF HE BCC-ED DALLI THEN DALLI WOULD HAVE GOT THE ORIGINAL ESTOC MESSAGE AS WELL. When you bcc somebody, it’s not only on that email that they get copied, but on the whole string of exchanges beneath. GOD, THIS IS SO EXHAUSTING, LIKE TALKING TO FIVE=YEAR-OLDS. What Dalli showed you is one message out of what would have been a string of them. And ask yourself: HOW DID HE GET THAT MESSAGE WITHIN MINUTES OF BEING ASKED TO RESIGN? Isn’t it because he had it already, or because Silvio Zammit handed it to him? And if Zammit handed it to him so quickly, isn’t it because he didn’t have to account to Dalli for what he did, because Dalli knew already? I’m surprised people manage to pass their maths O-level when I read comments like this. Mhux ta’ b’xejn ghandu suq daqstant qawwi l-Labour.]
Which also suggests that John Dalli or one of his elves tampered with the email pictured above to make it look like it came out of the blue. I’m dying to see it compared to one of the attachments in the OLAF report mentioned by Kessler.
Daphne: You would do GonziPN a world of good if you carry out your wish , to knock your brains out against some wall ” and have done with it “!
There is another thing I do not understand. Why is John Dalli suggesting that the quote “how much you would charge for that” implies that it was ESTOC that was offering to bribe the Maltese entrepreneur?
If the Maltese entrepreneur had already approached ESTOC and suggested that he could provide ‘services’ in connection with John Dalli in return for payment without specifying the amounts, then:
(a) It would still be the Maltese entrepreneur who asked for a bribe, while
(b) Inge Delfosse would still ask how much he would charge for the specific services she was asking for.
I cannot understand why the secretary general of such an important organisation in the tobacco industry felt the need to contact her friend in Malta.
I also cannot understand why she would have befriended a semi-literate moron, who is a spitting image of humpty-dumpty, in the first place.
It could be she found his mqaret irresistible.
It’s highly likely, though not necessarrily so, that there was previous correspondence between Inge and Silvio as it seems from the ‘to:’ she has his email address saved in her contacts list.
[Daphne – THANK YOU. I’m ruddy worn out with pointing out these obvious, stark, staring facts myself. It’s like talking to children. SUSPICIOUS children who think that they are more clever than an anti-Mafia magistrate and DG of the EU’s anti-fraud office. Honestly.]
You are assuming that because it says ‘Silvio Zammit’ that it really is ‘Silvio Zammit’.
It was sent in reply to an account in the name of ‘Silvio Zammit’ but it could be anyone behind the account.
I want to see the email address and the IP address.
Then we can make our own minds up.
[Daphne – How did you fare in maths at school? Badly? I would say so. Here’s your explanation. 1. John Dalli had a copy of the email. If it was sent to some random fake account to frame Silvio Zammit, then John Dalli would not have had that copy. He had that copy because it came from the real, live Silvio Zammit, either in physical hard copy or electronically. 2. John Dalli himself, during his interview with New Europe, on camera, confirmed that the email was sent to the Silvio Zammit we know. Tomorrow morning, go to the pharmacy and buy some Omega-3 capsules. They’re supposed to help in mental development.]
Is it not possible that Dalli has the password to the Zammit email account and was accessing it from his office via the internet?
Not being funny but you could rename your email account at dcg@proximuspr to show the name ‘Silvio Zammit’.
In fact, you can go onto any free email service, yahoo, hotmail, etc and set up as ‘Silvio Zammit’.
Think about it, Dalli wouldn’t need to be bcc-ed if it was him sending the emails from the ‘Silvio Zammit’ account.
[Daphne – Don’t be ridiculous.]
I cannot believe what I’m reading.
Hey ‘Interested’, Get uninterested, You^re out of your depth on this one.,
All I can give you are the facts, I can’t give you the apparatus to deal with them.
You are the investigative journalist: ask the Swedes for the email address of the account the Zammit emails were sent from; and also the IP address they were sent from.
Publish them.
PS Thank you for your kind words.
I think you are right.
Definitely
“2. John Dalli himself, during his interview with New Europe, on camera, confirmed that the email was sent to the Silvio Zammit we know.”
Yes, it was sent to the email account named Zammit but Zammit himself need not be opening and replying to the emails.
What is the email address behind the account names Silvio Zammit? That will tell us a lot.
Also, what is the IP address of the emails sent from the Zammit account?
Dalli might think he is being clever by pretending to be Zammit in his email replies. But every email sent has the sender’s IP address included in the header details.
If Dalli was sending emails from his office PC in Zammit’s name, they would have Dalli’s PC’s IP address.
Shooting fish in a barrel for the magistrate and in my guess, for the phrase ‘unambiguous circumstantial evidence’.
Listen, even if all this was pointed out to Dalli he still would not get it.
Dan xi burger-flipper jahdem ma’ Silvio Zammit nahseb jien. Kemm se jinsisti.
This is what I wrote when Dalli resigned : “OCTOBER 16, 2012 AT 9:14 PM
There was something going on, some time ago he suspected that his emails were being hacked.”
In Maltese we have two sayings “Sargu xih b’gamblu jinten jinqabad” and “Il-garra gejja w sejra fl-ahhar tinkiser”. That is what happened to Malta’s Commissioner.
Most probably, John was informed about the hacking attack on the EU portal (I read it somewhere that all the commissioners confirmed it after John ‘revealed” the attack), investigators disguised as IT people were authorised to “repair” the commissioner’s computer and “investigate” about who was hacking John’s computer.
They misled him by giving him some Maltese IP Addresses which made no sense after investigation, hence no report was filed to the Police commissioner. No need to tell you that the “IT people” downloaded ALL John’s emails to another computer in the process.
When I read this “Re” letter which is written in informal English I concluded immediately that an EU commissioner should never have printed and grabbed that letter in front of anyone. He should have forwarded it IMMEDIATELY to his colleagues and to his boss BARROSO at 10:14 of the 16th March 2012, and asked OLAF to investigate what was going on.
The fact that the commissioner knew about the letter and did not inform Barroso about it, is enough evidence for an immediate resignation.
The aftermath for Dalli is that his friends in the Labour Party are waiting “cautiously and prudently” like they did with Gaddafi, and his ex-colleagues in the PN would not like to be seen with him after he burnt all the bridges with the PN.
Would you buy a “pastizz” from John or a “maqrut” from Silvio? I wouldn’t.
I expect the PN executive to suspend Dalli’s party membership till he clears his name in court. Corruption should not be treated lightly. Dalli should not expect preferential treatment.
Swedish Match said in the press release that it passed all the available information concerning it to OLAF. This means that if other emails were exchanged, OLAF knew about them. The emails will eventually be sent with the report to the Attorney General.
If John Dalli has only that email to show for defence,then he should seriously start working very hard.
All correspondence prior to this email should also have been presented to the press. BUT MOST OF ALL THE REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.
I have no doubt that OLAF have irrefutable proof about who initiated the dealings and about Dalli’s involvement. Kessler’s discourse and body language said it all.What I cannot understand is why Dalli,who is no fool, has chosen to kick up such a fuss at this stage when he knows that all will be revealed in due course.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Dalli showed the email to the media himself. That means it certainly wasn’t forged. To date, Silvio Zammit has not denied its existence or that he received it.
Attempts at denying the autheticity of this email are absolutely ludicrous.
It was Dalli himself who produced it and then waved it around for all the world to see.
This implies it is perfectly genuine in all respects.
What sticks out and is more important is that Inge and Silvio are buddies.
I wonder why.
Maybe she has a penchant for eating imqaret (or pastizzi).
“how much you would charge for that”
Means:
It is already established that Mr Zammit charges for his services in setting up meetings, and it is possible/likely that payments have been made in the past.
Not that there is wrong in that per se.
[Daphne – OH MY GOD. OF COURSE THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH THAT. Why do you think there was a major scandal in Britain when it was discovered that Sarah, Duchess of York, had asked journalists posing as Middle Eastern businessmen for half a million pounds to arrange a meeting with her ex husband, Prince Andrew, in his role as a British trade emissary? BECAUSE THERE IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LOBBYIST AND A GATEKEEPER. Silvio Zammit was not cast in the role of lobbyist; he was recognised for what he was: Dalli’s gatekeeper, who had to be paid for access to Dalli. What is the difference between this and paying Il-Fusellu for access to Patrick Holland fi zmien id-deheb? NOTHING, except for the potential outcome. Patrick Holland had more discretion and leeway than an EU Commissioner does.]
In case of any contradiction with OLAF stating “no payments were made” – OLAF also was clear that the investigation started in May (?) and what happened before, unless recorded I presume, is not part of it.
‘There is nothing wrong in that per se’ – only in countries where the custom of baksheesh is enshrined in the Constitution.
Wrong or right depends on what was or was not promised, and, substantively, would have been reflected in the fees requested.
[Daphne – No. Having a gatekeeper who demands money for access is ABSOLUTELY WRONG. This is in no way to be confused with lobbying. The amount of money is almost irrelevant, as is the issue of whether the meeting yields the required result or not. I’ll present you with a situation: the prime minister of Malta has a driver or sidekick and it is common knowledge that if you want access to the prime minister, you must pay this driver or sidekick. How is this wrong or right depending on the amount of money or what was promised? IT IS WRONG IN AND OF ITSELF.]
This is borne out by the fact that the events were only flagged when Silvio Zammit apparently requested a large sum of money, and not before. This was when “seriously wrong” came into it.
It is understood that nobody does anything for free, and if Zammit previously presented himself as an organiser of meetings and nothing more, a facilitator of sorts, someone who handles Dalli’s out-of-office schedule, then a reasonable fee would be expected to be paid. After all the very fact that small money would have been paid for an arranged meeting would, perversely, legitimise the intentions.
[Daphne – You have got to be joking. Every politician has people who organises his or her meetings. They work in the office, are official, and salaried. The system we are speaking of here is literally third-world. By no means is it acceptable in the European Union and Dalli and Zammit have had this made amply clear to them before the watching world. Yes, I know that Maltese people find this very difficult to understand, precisely because of the cultural problems which afflict us all to some degree, but which are at their extreme in the son of a pastizzar from Hal Qormi and an illiterate mqaret vendor from Sliema’s Lazy Corner. At least Noel Arrigo knew that what he was doing was horrendously wrong, even if he still did it. My deep and abiding fear is of those Maltese who actually don’t understand the parameters of right and wrong because they come from the same pragmatic survivalist (very, very hard and amoral) culture that afflicts much of southern Italy and North Africa.]
If someone wanted to bribe somebody they would not expect to pay small money for a meeting with the corrupt individual, but a hefty sum for results obtained – the corrupt individual and any go-betweens would not be after the small meeting arrangement fee.
Let’s face it – the interested parties knew Dalli, if Zammit did not provide a useful service at good value then they could have gone through the system and set up meetings themselves. Up to the point an obscene demand was made, Zammit was just convenient to use, and Dalli collaborated, for what incentive, we can not know, perhaps even friendship.
[Daphne – I agree with you on that score, but part company on ‘we shall never know why Dalli collaborated’. The reason is obvious. Money. Friendship my eye. Somebody like Dalli does not risk his career for a friend.]
The moment the large demand was made then Swedish Match flagged it up, since it implied far more than just a meeting co-ordination fee.
I am more inclined to see it your way now. Dalli’s “part time” meetings were definitely not a good idea, innocent or otherwise.
Of course “nobody does anything for free”. A workman has to be paid, however he gets paid by the person who asks for his services. That’s called ‘being employed’.
It is completely out of line to ask for money to arrange a meeting with the commissioner to change a legislation that he’s working upon. Again, lobbying is accepted, bribing is not.
The Re argument is valid, and it’s definitely a reply, but you have no way of knowing if it was the immediate reply to the initial email or there were previous emails before.
If the first email was by these guys, the 2nd reply was by Silvio, and this might be the third reply.
So, this might be still innocent – though, if he was clearly above water, a simple printout of the conversation would clear everything once and for all.
[Daphne – INNOCENT? Marelli, what country am I living in? It feels like another planet.]
Some of these comments support my opinion that, as a nation, our umbilical cord is still attached to the Maghreb.
This is not meant as a racist comment but as a sad undeniable fact.
I’m sick of Dalli. The poor man is always getting embroiled in some scandal or other. Did he really think that while in Brussels he could still carry on with his underhanded dealings?
And does he really think that he can fool us by reproducing an email which smells strongly of past correspondence in the age of IT? The majority of EU citizens have sent and received emails. A good percentage of them work with emails every day.
Lil min jahseb li jrid jghaddi minn ghajn il-labra dan ghid?
What is holding Gonzi back from suspending Dalli from the PN pending clarification of this mess?
[Daphne – The mess doesn’t really have to be clarified. He has embarrassed Malta and the European Commission and that’s more than enough to be going on.]
This is worth reading:
http://ec-eu-john-dalli.blogspot.com/
This guy (Joseph Ellul Grech) is Dalli Watch, his writings show that he was right all along the way.
Worth reading.
After reading the above comments and seeing everyone (except Daphne) get their knickers in a twist over this email, it reminds me of that allegedly fake Jersey Bank statement of Dalli’s that got everyone similarly confused.
I believe there is no conspiracy theory with either the email or the bank statement. Focusing on the things themselves, the obvious is the reality. It’s as simple as that.