"....and the comments by Dr Sweeney that there are enough patients enrolled to reach the 250 event threshold."

I don't think Sweeney's comment cleared anything up. 2400 diabetic, low-HDL, recent ACS patients will eventually have 250 3-point MACE events. It is not a question of if, but when. There was no time factor included in Sweeney's comment. 

"Given that the DSMB is unblinded and they know the company wants the trial to go to the end my optimist wonders if the company has been informally told something along the lines of “don’t worry about it, you don’t need it”.  That would only make sense if it is so statistically obvious that analysis is not required but who knows??"

There are statistical penalities for interim analyses. One cannot cheat and get results of the analysis w/o doing the analysis. The DSMB will only do the SSRA if instructed to do so. I like your optimisim, but don't get too carried away. 

BearDownAZ