Brussels to investigate ethics of Dalli trips

The European Commission is delving deeper into the trips and ‘charitable consultancies’ made by John Dalli in the Bahamas to establish whether he breached the code of conduct for commissioners when in office. If this is found to be the case, the Commission might decide to start procedures in front of the European Court of Justice to terminate Mr Dalli’s allowances and pension rights afforded to Brussels functionaries. The International Herald Tribune reported that Mr Dalli travelled to the Atlantic Ocean tax haven in 2012 in a bid to “move millions”. Mr Dalli defended his actions saying he was there to do voluntary consultancy work with a group of philanthropist Christian evangelicals wanting to set up a multi-billion dollar fund that would invest in African business ventures with a charitable aim. He admitted he did not seek the permission of the Commission to do such voluntary consultancy, even though the code of conduct strictly prohibited serving commissioners from engaging in any type of external professional activity, “whether gainfully, or not”. The code also empowers the president of the Commission to set up an ad-hoc ethics committee to make recommendations in case a...