European Parliament building in Strasbourg.
Photo. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler
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Belgian police arrested Socialist European Parliament vice-president Eva Kaili from Greece and four other people over the weekend on corruption charges involving the Gulf state of Qatar.
“Prosecutors suspect that Qatar influences the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament by transferring large sums of money or making large gifts to third parties who hold an important and/or strategic position in the European Parliament,” Le Soir newspaper reported, citing the Belgian prosecutor. Police conducted 16 raids in Brussels, seizing around €600,000 in cash, as well as electronic equipment and mobile phones.
Kaili, a 44-year-old former TV presenter, has repeatedly praised Qatar’s labor market reforms despite documentary evidence that hundreds of foreign migrant workers died in accidents during stadium construction ahead of the World Cup.
European Parliament vice-president Kaili, a MEP for eight years, has been arrested after Belgian police found bags of cash in her home.
The arrests linked to suspicions of corruption in the European Parliament are “very, very worrying,” said EU foreign policy chief Giuseppe Borel.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said allegations of membership in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption leveled against European Parliament officials were “very devastating”, adding that a detailed investigation should be conducted into this case . Terry Reintke, co-chair of the Green bloc in the European Parliament, has pressed for Kyle’s immediate resignation, and the group of MEPs has already proposed stripping her of parliamentary immunity. European Parliament president Roberta Metsola suspended Kaili as vice-president, suspended her membership of the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group and expelled her from Greece’s centre-left Pasok party.
Belgian police also arrested Kylie’s life partner and work assistant Francesco Giorgi, former member of the European Parliament Pierre Antoni Panceri and lawyer Niccolò Figo-Talamanca. The home of Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella was also raided, but he was not arrested. Tarabella is the deputy head of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and the co-chair of the European Parliament’s sports committee.
Today, at the session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, discussion of the issue of the termination of the mandate of Vice-President for the current Vice-President Kaili is scheduled.
Some MEPs believe that lobbying rules in the European Parliament should be tightened up and more open. “We won’t be able to save our democracy if we don’t carry out a real cleanup,” stressed Rafael Glucksman, representative of the French Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament. Some MPs have suggested the creation of an independent ethics commission whose decisions would be binding on all EU institutions, but the European Commission wants to limit itself to an institution without investigative powers.
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