The new EU health commissioner’s first known contact with a tobacco lobbyist was on 20 August 2010 at the five-star Kempinski Hotel on the Maltese island of Gozo.
John Dalli was still in his swimming trunks, he later recalled.
Silvio Zammit had brought along Tomas Hammargren, who worked for British American Tobacco (BAT) and who was also the chairman of the snus-makers’ lobby, Estoc.
Zammit organised the encounter on behalf of an associate whose boss was BAT’s director in Malta, Charles Saliba.
“Dalli allocated time to talk about smokeless [tobacco] with us during his vacation,” Hammargren noted in his Estoc debriefing – one of many files contained in a report on the lobbying scandal by Olaf, the EU anti-fraud office, which was leaked to Maltese media in 2013.
Next to the name “Silvio Zammit”, Hammargren scribbled “very close friend to JD [John Dalli]”.
But the 15-minute “off-the-record” meeting was a dud.
Nikolaj Nielsen