John Dalli, victim of the tobacco lobby: on France 2’s Cash Investigation
Published:
October 9, 2014 at 9:21am
If you can’t be bothered to watch the whole thing, take the bar straight to the midway point for the John Dalli segment.
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… anyone who understands French care to give us a summary?
The documentary exposes the corruption of the tobacco industry and their manipulative concoctions, with Barroso in their inner pocket, to oust the health commissioner who wouldn’t bow to their lobbying over the tobacco directive. That is why the anti-tobacco Greens admire Dalli and despise Barroso.
[Daphne – I am passionately anti-tobacco and I despise John Dalli.]
Didn’t bow to their lobbying, eh? Who’d have thought that Kevin Ellul Bonici could be so naive.
The hole in that argument is Dalli’s replacement – the arch- conservative Tonio Borg say the Tobacco Directive through with no concessions to the Snus lobby.
As far as we know it was John Dalli’s henchman who asked for €60 million to ease the tobacco directive and not Barroso.
The man seems prone to controversy. His paranoia is either the effect or the cause of his behaviour which is always that little bit strange.
For example, he sees conspiracies raging against him and he hits out at the top brass in the EU and at his former colleagues at the PN – and yet he is so forgiving, so silent, when it comes to Silvio Zammit, the long standing intimate friend who got him into this mess and without whom we would never have even heard of OLAF and Giovanni Kessler.
I ask myself, what does Silvio Zammit have on John Dalli?
Unfortunately, Dalli’s stance is supported by other politicians from other ideological camps but, who in this case, have their own agenda to defend consisting of combating the powerful and corrupt tabacco industry.
That’s Brussels for you.
You are right.
Why did John Dalli not take any court action against Silvio Zammit for harming his reputation? After all, Dalli had said he had written an ‘official letter’ – or was it actually just a private letter by a lawyer, or maybe was there no letter at all but one can be quickly forged if push comes to shove? – threatening him in this sense.
In my view, Dalli has a case against Zammit, because if I am not wrong, the OLAF investigation had concluded that Zammit was using Dalli’s name in the request for Eur 60 million.
In the hypothesis that Dalli is a victim in this case, then he should ask himself ‘why?’. If the tobacco industry designates someone as a scapegoat, rest assured that they would obtain every speck of information about the person’s background, which in Dalli’s case is very colourful.
He first knew about the bribery allegation first week July but he waits almost two months to send a “judicial” letter to his old mate Silvio.
It is later revealed to have been in fact a private legal letter.
He does not denounce Silvio Zammit in any of his public appearances preferring (or having to out of fear) to throw dirt at Kessler, Barroso, Gonzi, Busuttil, as if these all sat down one day with the tobacco lobby and got paid to organise a frame-up.
I mean, in 2012 Gonzi was not busy at the time and wanted to make a quick buck. Right.
He refuses to explain the trip to Singapore. Has he ever explained in an normal way why he rented out an expensive villa in the Bahamas for a year? Instead he plays the victim card.
Just a very mundane question: Was the pressure applied to Dalli to compromise the anti-snus directive also applied to Tonio Borg, who, after all, presented a near identical directive as Dalli was supposed to have presented?
If not, why not? They were not afraid to pressure Dalli, but were terrified of Tonio Borg?
Is Tonio Borg authorized to answer the question, if asked?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141009/local/opinions-differ-over-islands-overseas-branding.539018
Issa sew.
Do you think for one second that Silvio Zammit had the know-how of a lobbyist in Brussels? Someone must have fed him with inside information about the on-goings of the tobacco directive. Now, who could that person be?
Dalli never denied (and couldn’t when faced with hard facts) that he was in contact with Silvio Zammit. He only said that they never discussed the tobacco directive.
Yeah.
The day after Zammit was grilled by OLAF, they had a 14 minute telephone chat. They want us to believe that they didn’t speak about Zammit’s interview AT ALL during that conversation.
Here is a formula on how to become rich on the basis of corruption at EU Commission level.
First propose legislation which is extremely tight and suffocating to big multinational business.
Then water it down at the rate of Eur 60 million per dilution.
If you ever get caught, claim an entrapment by those big businesses for proposing legislation which regulates their excesses.
They didn’t check his LinkedIn page as they think he stopped being Commissioner in 2012.
What a pathetic mise en scène.
I think that quite honestly we are giving far too much exposure to this man. There are far more pressing issues both at a regional as well as an international level (and the national level) to be wasting time on this case.
[Daphne – Hardly. There’s a monstrous evil lurking just below the surface of Maltese society. The mistake people are making is to look at all these cases in isolation. Malta is a town of fewer than half a million people. Those who are working below the surface have no choice but to work together.]
Oh, look, someone from the OPM has been reading The Malta Independent’s reports about the power station that there isn’t, and has ordered the start of some “preparatory works.”
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-10-09/local-news/Updated-Preparatory-excavations-dredging-works-being-carried-out-Delimara-gas-power-station-site-6736123369
Now wait a moment. Hadn’t Kurt Sansone of The Times reported that:
“Structural works on a gas-fired power station in Delimara may not be seen above the surface but developers have started drilling down, according to Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi.”
– The Times, 12 July 2014
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140712/local/Mizzi-drilling-work-at-Delimara-started.527321
That was three months ago.
It looks like the site preparation work just started out there is far above the ground level, and it is fully visible from the Freeport terminal and the surrounding areas.
What, and why exactly have the developers been hiding under the ground for the last three months? Did they build the power station underneath that rubble, and now the project is going to be revealed as soon as they cart all that dirt away?
Sansone had also reported that:
“Dr Mizzi said he was informed that the designs for the plant were ready and work will pick up over the summer. He insisted work was on schedule.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140711/local/updated-power-station-drilling-works-started-mizzi.527285
Summer ended on 21 September, and they have only just started clearing a mound of earth waste material. Surely the works must now be behind schedule…I guess it’s time for the Minister’s favourite soundbite again: “Everything is on track, Kurt, Miriam.”
“This paper also observed OPM and Enemalta officials on site” says The Malta Independent. Why would Electrogas Malta Limited have OPM officials on the site of its private project?
The report is about the tobacco industries and the way their money/ profits finance both their objectives and EU and French national budgets. The claim is that it is corruption.
John Dalli is put forward as a victim
A document has come to light and this is analysed. It is purported to be the Philip Morris strategy for countering EU directives from the influence and lobbying perspective.
The report is apparently detailed: Business intelligence appertaining to the market that affects its operations. The report is slammed by the interviewers who evidently sympathise with John Dalli without putting his story into any full perspective.
The report also touches upon the notion that tobacco companies are financing the French Budget and therefore schools, hospitals etc.
The report mentions an old cliché, now apparently quantified by Czech consultants at Arthur D Little, that there is an optimal age to die at and that “a smoker pays your pension:”savings by the State are made once a smoker dies having effected his pensions contributions. In fact, the question put was that according to the report, it supposedly doesn’t pay the State to keep a smoker alive.
(Nothing new till now.)
The report is interspersed with chapter titles that are said to be from the marketing manual of Philip Morris to its resellers.
Chapter one
Learn to control / influence your deputy
Documented statistic:
161 Lobbyists working for Philip Morris’ interests in Brussels.
The report reflects a weak and naïve approach to detailed reports by industry
This sort of report gets prepared in this detail by most companies not just Philip Morris.
In general it is an extremely naïve approach, and disappointing that the interviewers could be so satisfied with their own level of inquiry.
The inquiry mainly focuses on the effects of business intelligence by Phillip Morris when every company worth its salt carries out the same level of business intelligence for its own industry.
The point against fishing out the undeclared lobbyists is valid. One should know which lobbyists are running around, and the general nature of their business.
A comment to Lucet from a Cigar Appreciation representative: “Je vous ai connu meilleure” – I have known you (perform) better.
Lesson Number 2: Learn how to gain time.
John Dalli is under this part.
He is screened as a victim and as the target of Philip Morris’ strategy of “gaining time in Brussels”
The report lists Dalli as one of the most well-known political figures in Malta.
To quote the report: Malte: “perdu entre la Sicile et la Libye” “un caillou en plein mer.” Malta: lost between Sicily and Libya, a pebble in the open sea/ in the middle of the sea.
The report admits that John Dalli has shady areas to his past: it refers to his proximity to Lobbyists in the OGM seat and refers to his trips to the Bahamas as though they were a separate item to his having been Commissioner.
At no time does the report delve into the Bahamas trips of John Dalli whilst he was Commissioner and at no time does it present the any further detail about the past of John Dalli. Strangely however, when in attack mode with other people in interviews the interviewer does seek to have a more general picture and does include other details to aid perspective.
Lucet has either not done her homework well enough, or, she herself could have an interest in only pursuing this line of enquiry, or the wool has been pulled before her eyes convincingly enough to stop where she did. I have to say that for a year of work on this subject, it’s pretty poor in presentation.
At 1:17 John Dalli is back to say that he knew nothing of the meetings with the Philip Morris lobbyists and that even had he known he wouldn’t have been influenced.
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Own opinion:
Government has used the lobbyist method of updating itself the world over. If it is the nature of the subject area that offends then the existence of the industry itself should be put under the microscope, not its efficiency in operating under open market conditions.
The question put as to the efficiency of EU administration is valid, but the existence and validation of lobbyist groups has permitted this for any industry operating under currently acceptable open market conditions.
Philip Morris is just as efficient as any other top notch company in marketing approach.
The word “manipulation” is nothing but naïve in this context and perspective used.
Hotels function with the same point reward system to individuals booking under company title that is attacked by this documentary.
The approach of the report is weak and lacking but for that the average Frenchman is not to blame: their industry updates, and by this I mean any form of business approach emanating from an Anglo-Saxon world, first needs to be translated. Effectively what happens is that any publications that make it through the selection process for translation can be up to seven years late when appearing on the French market. Also, the French nature of market protection is so particular that this means technology like ADSL was approximately 6 to 7 years late in reaching the average household.
The problem of interpretation and translation is evident in the report clip even with the notion of the word “stealth” in English: the understanding goes off on the wrong track.
That is the French way of information filtering and keeping the average (70%) of the population content on a salary that rarely spikes above l800 euro per month. That’s a taboo subject in France by the way, so as not to offend, even though it’s more than common knowledge.
Business intelligence is novelty for the average Frenchman. Strategy positions have only got a foothold in PMIs there over the last decade. This makes it approximately at least 15 to 25 years behind the anglo-saxon world.
When it comes to money, for the reason referred to above, certain French are convinced that any money in large quantities is dirty money. This is a country where the French believe they are big players on the black market if they have an opportunity for an extra and undeclared earning of say 20 euros a day. Money makes them gag. Communists still exist in France and children of people voting for Communists would have been raised against this background although today purporting to be modern and up to date. Until the coming of Hollande the Leftist pure Socialist sentiment was extremely strong.This report has a flavour of both.
The report remains naïve throughout. The type of people interviewed will never understand how Philip Morris really works, and worked, and John Dalli is exploiting that angle of naivety.
The report is asking for exposure of agreements between first the EU and tobacco companies and then the French State and tobacco companies.
The interviewers have not seen these reports, cannot get access to them so therefore, their reasoning says, then the deal isn’t clean. Kessler’s reasoning and explanation gives the answer, but the interviewers did not understand it.
It’s a bit sad to see a major French TV station entertain such inferior standards of reporting and of perspective.
It is the quality of the enquiry that is a problem not the subject matter.
The interviewer has not taken the time to research, assess, condense and understand the complete history of Philip Morris. It is making half-baked assumptions against an incomplete picture.