The prime minister has a hell of a lot of explaining to do
We now know for a fact that John Dalli and his family were in the Bahamas last summer, where they rented a house for three months in the name of Dalli’s daughter, Claire Gauci Borda, for $8000 a month.
We know that Dalli told the man who rented them the house that he was there to transfer large sums of money.
We know that Dalli told the International Herald Tribune/New York Times that the money ‘belongs to friends’ and that he was moving it ‘for friends with a philanthropic project in Africa’.
We know that the amounts moved were of ‘tens of millions’ of dollars and that the IHT asked him specifically about movements of up to $100 million.
This was last summer, when John Dalli was publicly in cahoots with Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party.
Just a couple of months later, when he was kicked out of his EU Commissioner’s job by a furious Barroso, when he was still standing in the corridor outside Barroso’s office, Dalli called Muscat. He was the first person he called.
We need to know – we always needed to know, but now the subject is infinitely more pressing – the real nature of the relationship between Muscat’s Labour Party and John Dalli.
Was John Dalli funding Labour?
There has to be a reason, a very big reason, why Muscat is prepared to expose himself to accusations of abuse of power and corruption so as to bend over backwards to help a scoundrel like Dalli.
Dalli escaped police investigation, interrogation and prosecution by holding out in Brussels with the aid of what look like fraudulent medical certificates, claiming that he was unable to travel to Malta because of ‘psycho-social problems’.
When the time-leeway on the first medical certificate ran out, he produced another one saying that he would not be able to travel at all until early March.
No prizes for guessing why.
Joseph Muscat is elected, Dalli miraculously recovers from his psycho-social problems and flies to Malta, where he is seen socialising and holding meetings.
The prime minister removes the police commissioner, who was heading the Dalli investigation personally, and also his two fellow investigators, Michael Cassar (moved to the Secret Service) and Angelo Gafa.
Nobody is left on the Dalli case.
The first thing the new police commissioner does is announce that there is no case against John Dalli.
John Dalli celebrates and receives congratulations. He organises a thanksgiving mass in his native Hal Qormi, said by his brother Gorg. It is not known whether his brother Bastjan, a notorious smuggler of drugs, whisky and other items, with whom John Dalli has not severed relations, is there to give thanks too.
The prime minister invites John Dalli to his office at the Auberge de Castille, and takes him by the hand in front of the assembled media cameras. He announces that Dalli is now working for the government, because Malta cannot afford to lose his great gifts and abilities.
He does not specify in what capacity Dalli will work for the government, but then says that he will be overhauling the general hospital and health systems.
John Dalli lied to his EU bosses about that weekend he flew to the Bahamas when he was supposed to be at an EU meeting in Cyprus. He told them that he had flown to Malta to attend to urgent family business.
Meanwhile, he was moving tens of millions of dollars around in secret accounts.
I am proud not to have voted Labour, proud to have always thought Dalli and Muscat to be scum.
Really proud.
36,000 people can be so very wrong. Indeed, 166,000 people were. And now we have got to spend five years paying the price, with a government of thieves, pimps and scoundrels.
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When you put the events together like this, it really is unbelievable (in a Victor Meldrew ‘I don’t believe it!’ sort of way).
He would actually say, ‘what in the name of bloody hell?!’
Everything is going Bastjan with this Labour government.
A simple google search will reveal this link –
http://www.ecita.org.uk/blog/index.php/dalli-doesnt-dilly-dally-on-the-way-out/
There is only one comment to this blog post dated Feb 2013
“Edward Butters says:
February 18, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Would anyone be interested that John Dalli visited the Bahamas with his daughter in Aug and Sept 2012. Rented a seaside million dollar mansion and had discussions with Bahamians about transferring tens of millions of $’s to the Bahamas? More info available.”
I don’t know if this guy’s real name is Edward Butters but you wonder why someone who has had this info for at least 6 months and was eager to spill the beans has been kept in the dark.
Claire Gauci Borda rents a villa in the Bahamas for Commissioner John Dalli skiving his EU duties to act for “friends”.
Meanwhile, Commissioner John Dalli spends several months carping, bitching and whining that inNazzjonalisti are being nasty ok because they say gej dal liba.
Dalli is disgraced and forced to resign.
Claire Gauci Borda takes up a directorship at Crystal finance, Joseph Muscat’s former employer.
Joseph Muscat is elected PM.
I simply don’t get what on earth the Labour Party is up to.
It’s hit and miss masochistic politics, devoid of any strategy, which will finally lead the government to an implosion.
The country imploded years ago and now the Labour party is patching up what is left before its too late.
[Daphne – Nothing like a deluded Laburist to help us put things into perspective. Amazing.]
Is there any valid reason why a person should mislead his colleagues or superiors on his whereabouts?
Is the allegation made in the IHT report in this respect an isolated occasion or part of a pattern?
Great piece.
The Kurt and the other PL spin doctors will be working overtime to worm their way out of this one.
My guess is they dust the “innocent until proven guilty card” again as though Dalli is still the victim here.
I guess as Dalli is friends with the prime minister, the Inland Revenue Department will not dare to start investigating Dalli for undeclared income.
As I had said on the 9th of March: I am out and I am proud.
Those 166,000 and especially those 20,000 or so switchers can only hang their heads low and cry. The problem is that we are obliged to cry with them.
What do you expect me to say?
It’s all in the OLAF report, if anyone bothers to read it, which you can easily do because Malta Today leaked it.
Indeed I am proud as you are. I never believed Dalli from the very first moment that he was declared “politically untenable”.
I always believed that Barroso and Kessler are neither crazy nor have an ulterior and arcane motive.
I never believed that 166,000 voters could make wrong things right. And I do not believe for one second that Dalli is so charitable and such a philantropic person.
I now believe that Dalli funded the PL and that in the end he will surely contribute to the PL’s undoing.
Is it possible that Gaddafi money played a crucial role in electing the MLP? Now what?
This story can provide the perfect alibi for the PN’s electoral result.
An insidious consolation, the new leadership must take a rational approach and understand the responsibility for the loss that has been the country’s.
Tall order. What matters, and has to be digested, is that Muscat’s success depended entirely on contaminating the PN and basically legitimising this behaviour and gutter aspiration.
We don’t have a government, we’ve been lumped with puppets answering to unelected masters.
This is what Labour was in the 80’s? 96 on the other hand, was when Sant refused to give in to the same regime.
The pressure’s on Muscat, what’s the PN waiting for? Nothing left to lose, just two decades of hard work.
Joseph Muscat has a lot to answer. He is right in the middle of the cyclone now. And he can’t say that the analysis had not been done for him, including on this blog and by OLAF.
Who is financing the Labour party? Who financed their electoral campaign? Why are they so cosy with John Dalli?
One should ask Kenneth Zammit Tabona and the rest of the LGBT crowd whether their priorities are really more important than these serious matters.
By the way, are USD 100 million enough to finance a new contemporary art museum?
And then John Dalli said that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Jesmond Mugliett et al considered him their father confessor.
Iz-zejt jitla f’wicc l-ilma.
They sure did, Bonzo. Birds of a feather flock together.
He has earned another nickname, “Moneybags Dalli” .
The PN should be reading your blog carefully and following it through.
Please can someone close to Simon Busuttil wake him and the rest of the team up.
Why are they keeping so cool about it all?
For goodness sake stop apologizing and making fools of yourselves by back-stabbing Dr. Gonzi and act immediately on these important matters.
When you think about the fuss the PL made about the 500 euro and the clock, this surely merits a proper and thorough investigation as it is far more grevious.
You are so right Natalie Mallett! PN wake up…Daphne’s column is an eye-opener. It is just like fitting the pieces together to make one large hideous jigsaw puzzle.
On reading this article I can’t help but think that Malta really isn’t a developed country at all.
We are all awaiting for Joseph Muscat’s answers…. and soon please. This is getting more serious by the day.
Is the PM not accountable for his actions one wonders?
The removal of the previous Police Commissioner, the support given to Dalli throughout, the latest appointment given to him by the new government, accepting his funding for obvious reasons; doesn’t this all point to Muscat being his accomplice?
Isn’t that a crime in itself? Are such actions acceptable from a Prime Minister? I shudder when I think what is to befall this unfortunate country next.
From Made in Brussels to Made in (the) Bahamas. Tsk.