Defence lawyers of Sliema restaurateur Silvio Zammit yesterday pressed the police’s witness Gayle Kimberley on whether she was the one who came up with the €60 million figure at the heart of the Dalligate scandal.
Kimberley denied it categorically, but lawyer Edward Gatt insisted on the point, reminding the young lawyer that she was testifying under oath, according to a story in The Malta Times.
He then went back to a note that Kimberley had prepared for Zammit with a series of questions for the former European Commissioner John Dalli and asked why she had written down that Swedish Match made a turnover of €500 million, half of which was profit.
She said that the figure was suggested by Swedish Match, adding that the intention was to relay the message to Dalli that the company was actually a modest trader in the tobacco industry.
However, at this point, Dr Gatt and his colleague Kris Busietta pressed further saying that she had mentioned that figure because she was later going to ask for €50 million to lift the ban through her contacts with Dalli. She later suggested changing it to €60 million “so it would not be a round figure”, according to the lawyer.
Shortly after this, Gatt stopped the cross-examination, saying he would continue at a later date because he needed time to review a lot of material, which the defence was analyzing, suggesting that they had material which was not available to the police or OLAF. Earlier, in fact, Gatt pointed out that Kimberley sent most of her emails through her phone. Nonetheless, when asked she said that neither OLAF nor the police had seized her phone, despite seizing her work and home computers.