Film Portrays Dalligate

The French film director Antoine Raimbault has released a movie about disgraced European Commissioner John Dalli, who was stripped of his role after the EU’s anti-fraud agency claimed he had failed to declare a tobacco-related bribery attempt, reports Malta Today.

The case dates from 2012, when Dalli’s aide Silvio Zammit allegedly tried to obtain a €60 million ($71.17 million) bribe from Swedish Match to reverse the EU ban on snus. The company rejected the offer as improper and reported it to the European Commission.

Une Affaire de Principe–marketed as Smoke Signals in English–recounts the story from the point of view of one of Dalli’s sole champions at the time, Jose Bove, a French farmer and member of the European Parliament for the Green party who is perhaps best known for dismantling a McDonald’s franchise in 1999 to protest new U.S. restrictions on importing Roquefort cheese and to raise awareness about McDonald’s’ use of hormone-treated beef.

Bove suspects Dalli’s defenestration was related to the tobacco industry’s desire to postpone the Tobacco Products Directive.

John Dalli, who has occupied no political post since his ouster from Brussels in October 2012, has always protested his innocence, claiming he was unaware of Zammit’s actions.