The Italian Francesco Giorgi, sentimental partner of the former vice president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, has confessed his involvement in the bribery scheme in the European Parliament (PE) that dots Qatar and Morocco, and has pointed to several implicated, as reported by the Belgian newspaper ‘Le Soir’.
Giorgi, 35 years old and father of a two-year-old girl with Kaili, 44, admitted his guilt to the police and before the investigating judge in the interrogations to which he has been subjected by the Belgian authorities in the scandal that broke out last Friday.
The parliamentary assistant, whom the judge decided to keep in pretrial detention, has pointed to the Italian former MEP Pier Antonio Panzieri, whom the police confiscated as the mastermind of the plot. 700,000 euros at your home and who is also charged and is in pretrial detention. Panzieri’s wife and daughter have been detained in Italy and Belgium has requested their surrender.
The young Italian has also blamed two other Social Democrat MEPs: the Belgian Marc Tarabella, whose address had already been searched by the authorities in the framework of the investigation, but who was at large; and the Italian Andrea Cozzolino, for whom Giorgi worked as an assistant.
Kaili, for her part, is in pretrial detention and his hearing is scheduled before the judge on the 22nd, after not being able to appear this Wednesday due to a strike by civil servants. In the records, the police found hundreds of thousands of euros in cash at the home of Kaili and Giorgi, with whom she has had a relationship for five years.
The agents also surprised Kaili’s father leaving a Brussels hotel with bags of money, a circumstance that allowed them to act despite parliamentary immunity of Greek politics, the understanding that he was committing a flagrant crime.
‘Le Soir’, the newspaper that along with Kanack gave the news on the scandal, adds that Giorgi did not charge Belgian MEP Maria Arena, who has not yet reached the police operation but who has made public that one of his assistants in the Eurochamber is also accused of the plot. The new data revealed by that newspaper increasingly points to Morocco, not just Qatar, as the origin of the bribes. He specifically points to the Moroccan ambassador to Poland, Abderrahim Atmoun, and two Moroccan secret service agents whom he does not identify.
The newspapers advanced the existence of an investigation for an alleged case of corruption, criminal organization and money laundering initiated by the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office last July on suspicion that Qatar would have tried to influence the position of Parliament. “For several months the judicial police investigators have suspected that a Gulf State has tried to influence economic and political decisions of the European Parliament,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement distributed to the press.
They would have done it”paying substantial amounts of money and offering large gifts to third parties with an important political or strategic position within the European Parliament”, he added. Although this institution does not explicitly mention Qatar, the two Belgian media outlets assure that several well-informed sources have confirmed to them that it is in this country where focuses the investigation led by a judge specializing in financial crimes.
Source: Lasexta
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