Witness lunched with OLAF director after interrogation

A seven-hour interrogation by OLAF director-general Giovanni Kessler of Gayle Kimberley at the start of the Dalligate investigation was followed by a quick lunch and a glass of wine, the witness told a court today.

In a continuation of the compilation of evidence against Silvio Zammit, accused of soliciting a €60 million bribe from Swedish Match back in February 2012 in a bid to reverse an EU ban on the sale of snus, Kimberley's testimony recounted the events following the 13 February 2012, when Zammit put his offer to Swedish Match's public affairs director Johan Gabrielsson.

Ensconced in her testimony was the story of the frayed relationship she had with Iosif Galea, a co-worker and scorned colleague who happened to be a personal friend of Silvio Zammit: it was Galea who presented Kimberley to Zammit in the first place, when the Maltese lawyer was asked by Gabrielsson to secure access to John Dalli, the EU health commissioner.

Galea, a compliance manager at the Lotteries and Gaming Authority where Kimberley served as a lawyer, was the first to learn of the OLAF investigation from Kimberley herself on the day of her interrogation, 15 June 2012.

Galea had flown to Portugal, where the witness was on official business, after having booked himself two tickets for Cyprus in a failed attempt at rekindling his relationship with Kimberley.

It was in Porugal that Kimberley learnt of the OLAF investigation, personally, from Giovanni Kessler who intercepted her shortly after breakfast at 9am on 15 June. After her interrogation, where she was instructed not to tell anybody of the investigation into the Swedish Match complaint, she informed Galea of what had happened.

A day after she returned to Malta, Silvio Zammit called her on the phone enquiring about the investigation. In court, Kimberley inferred that Zammit had learnt of the OLAF interrogation "from the commissioner" - a reference to John Dalli - and later told the Court that Zammit had given her the impression that he had already spoken to Dalli.

It has already been established that Dalli was formally notified by OLAF that he was a "person concerned in an investigation" on 11 July; and that Iosif Galea informed Zammit of what happened in Portugal soon after he was told of the interrogation by Kimberley.

That same day of the 15 June interrogation, Kimberley said that Kessler terminated the interview by taking her out for a spot of lunch and a glass of wine - "to relax" as she described it - and then returned to the hotel room to review the statement that he had dictated to his secretary throughout the interview.

"Kessler would dictate my statements to his secretary, and she typed the report. An hour and a half later [after the lunch] I was asked to sign the statement. He appeared in a hurry to leave the hotel after 4pm so he gave me the statement to review and sign, on the understanding that any corrections would be done at a later stage when the statement would be sent to me. I felt a little woozy from the lunch," Kimberley said, saying she reviewed the statement quickly enough to sign it and bring the ordeal to an end.

Emerging "stressed" from the interview, Kimberley told a concerned Galea what had happened. She also said that at that stage, Kessler had warned her to be on her guard from either Silvio Zammit or John Dalli.

Iosif Galea later took active interest in what had happened, ostensibly on Zammit's behalf. Kimberley told the court that Galea had accessed her personal Gmail inbox, and forwarded a document of information she had sent to OLAF, to Zammit. She knew this because it was Galea himself who challenged her on the contents of the document she sent to OLAF, apparently annoyed at the attention being focussed on his friend.

"I had once given him my work email's password because I had asked him to urgently forward an email to the LGA chief executive. I changed my password after that. I didn't give him my Gmail password - apparently it was easy to know since it was my son's name."

In July, after Kessler came to Malta to interview Silvio Zammit, an OLAF official told Kimberley that she was to "fear Zammit, who is agitated and angry" and also "to stay at home".

At this point, Kimberley informed her husband - by her own admission unaware of the OLAF investigation - of what had happened, and that he had gone to directly confront Zammit on this alleged threat.

"They told me that Zammit was very agitated about what had happened, and they said that they feared for my safety. 'Don't leave the house', they told me. My husband was going abroad, and I hadn't told him about the investigation and he decided to go and meet Zammit to confront the alleged threat. And the impression he got was not that he was not a threat."

Compounding Kimberley's discomfort was the frayed situation with the scorned Iosif Galea, who was harassing her with such threats as disabling her vehicle's brakes. Police inspector Angelo Gafà's line of questioning at this point was objected to by Zammit's defence lawyer, who told the court that these threats were unconnected to Kimberley's professional relationship with Zammit.

In August 2012, Kimberley was in touch again with OLAF, asking them why her signed statement had not been sent back to her earlier. "The statement was sent to me before August, and I pointed out that it was not a fair representation of what I said. I also said I wanted a lawyer present with me for my second interview and to have it recorded, and not have a selective summary."

It was at this point that Kimberley told the court of how her own review of her statement in the June interrogation, had been preceded by the lunch she had with Kessler, and that she felt woozy after having had a glass of wine.

A second interview took place in August, and then another seven-hour interview in Brussels on the 15 September, with Kimberley's lawyer Gianella de Marco by her side.

From Swedish Match to ESTOC

Shortly after that date, Gabrielsson had told Kimberley to inform Zammit that Swedish Match would not accede to his request.

Later, Zammit was supposed to have informed Kimberley that British-American Tobacco (Zammit had a professional relationship with BAT's presence in Malta and had already secured a meeting for Thomas Hammargren in 2010 with John Dalli) would be interested in her services.

"'Gayle', he said, '[BAT] would be very interested in your services, especially for packaging and labelling'. I stayed in contact with Silvio thereafter. He sent an email and my CV as a form of introduction of my services to BAT."

But shortly after Gabrielsson contacted Kimberley, sometime in mid-March, telling her that Zammit had made the same €60 million offer to Inge Delfosse of the smokeless tobacco lobby ESTOC (lobbyists for Swedish Match), apparently citing Kimberley's own services.

"Gabrielsson told me Zammit was speaking to Delfosse offering the same deal and using my services. I thought it must be that email I sent him for BAT. I confronted Silvio directly... he assured me that he had known Delfosse way before I was engaged by Swedish Match and that the services offered were his own, and that he had made it clear that I had nothing to do with this."