Alleged corruption in the European Parliament: Eva Kaili defends herself from any embezzlement with Qatar
Greek MEP Eva Kaili, implicated in a resounding alleged corruption scandal involving Qatar, proclaimed her innocence pending a court decision on Wednesday, claiming to be unaware of the existence of the considerable sums of money found at her home.
Belgian justice must decide on Wednesday whether the former vice-president of the European Parliament remains in detention or not. She is suspected of having been paid by Doha to defend the interests of the emirate which currently hosts the World Cup.
Belgian justice must also decide on the possible maintenance in prison of the three other people imprisoned since Sunday including the former MEP Pier-Antonio Panzeri and Francesco Giorgi, the companion of Eva Kaili.
Arrested on Friday in Brussels, the 44-year-old elected official, stripped of her duties as Vice-President of the European Parliament on Tuesday, affirmed via her lawyer in Athens that she was “innocent” and was unaware of the existence of the bags of banknotes found at his Brussels home by Belgian investigators.
Eva Kaili has “no relation to the money found at her home (…) she did not know of the existence of this money”, assured Michalis Dimitrakopoulos in an interview with AFP.
– “Innocent” –
He insisted that his client was “innocent” when bags filled with banknotes worth 150,000 euros were discovered in his apartment in Brussels, according to a Belgian judicial source.
The lawyer, who said he spoke several times by telephone with his client in detention, stressed that “only his companion”, with whom she lived, could provide “answers on the existence of this money”.
The father of the politician was surprised with a suitcase containing 750,000 euros in cash.
Finally, 600,000 euros were seized from the home of Pier-Antonio Panzeri, a former Italian socialist MEP now at the head of an NGO in Brussels.
Qatar has firmly denied the accusations, but a judicial source in Belgium confirmed to AFP that this country was well suspected by Belgian investigators.
Faced with this scandal which threatens its credibility, the European Parliament on Tuesday stripped the elected Greek of her position as vice-president.
This sanction for “serious misconduct” was approved almost unanimously by the deputies present in Strasbourg in plenary session, i.e. 625 votes in favor out of 628 cast.
Eva Kaili, MEP since 2014 after having been a member of the Greek Parliament (Vouli) between 2007 and 2012, occupied for only eleven months one of the 14 vice-presidencies of the Parliament.
According to sources within the Pasok-Kinal, the leadership of this formation, already shaken in its history by corruption cases, is also putting pressure on Eva Kaili to give up her seat as MEP.
– “Offensive”-
The leader of Pasok-Kinal, also MEP, Nikos Androulakis proposed Tuesday before the plenary assembly of the European Parliament the creation of “a special body responsible for examining the assets of MEPs and the way in which they were acquired”.
The President of the European Parliament denounced with this Eva Kaili affair an “attack” on democracy.
This scandal also caused a shock wave in Greece where business and suspicions of corruption plague the country, arousing the fed up of the population.
Many Greeks expressed their shame to see this former presenter of the TV channel Mega involved in such a scandal.
As of Monday, the Greek Anti-Money Laundering Authority had frozen all the assets of the MEP and her relatives.
The Greek press also echoed Eva Kaili’s privileged relationship with a sulphurous Russian-Greek magnate Ivan Savvidis, owner in particular of the Thessaloniki football club PAOK and former elected official of the Duma in Russia.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has remained silent since the revelations about this vast scandal, is due to meet his peers this Wednesday in Brussels for a summit of the Twenty-Seven with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. (ASEAN).
In Qatar, France and Morocco meet this Wednesday in the semi-finals of the World Cup while Argentina has already qualified for the final by beating Croatia 3-0.