John Dalli goes berserk and uses intimidation tactics

Corruption personified

Instead of suing for libel – he has no grounds, because the newspaper reported pure fact on a public-interest matter concerning a prominent politician and former European Commissioner who has been in the news consistently – John Dalli has reported to the police the journalist, Jacob Borg, who wrote about him for The Malta Independent on Sunday.

Jacob Borg had interviewed the American investors who wired their money to a company owned by John Dalli and fronted by his daughters, and who never saw that money again.

Dalli also reported to the police all the directors and shareholders of Standard Publications Ltd, the company which owns and publishes The Malta Independent and The Malta Independent on Sunday. He did not report the newspaper’s editor and he did not report me, either.

He also reported to the Malta Police the US investors and their spokesman who have contacted the press here in Malta and who have been writing about him on the internet.

It is pretty clear what he is doing here. He has no grounds for action in a proper court of law, so he is trying to intimidate the directors and shareholders of the newspaper – all of whom run businesses separate to Standard Publications Ltd – into preventing The Malta Independent’s journalists from investigating him further and publishing stories about him.

He is doing this by reminding them of his undue and corrupt influence on the police and on the prime minister and his government, and signalling that there might well be consequences for them and their businesses if they don’t order the newsroom to keep off the subject of him.

He is also trying to scare the US investors into keeping quiet and not pursuing their funds further.

As for the timing of his police report – the story was published on Sunday, so you would have expected Dalli to file his report on Monday. But he did so today, in an attempt at deflecting some of the fall-out from the headlines about how he lost his case in the European Court of Justice.