With a backpack, an electronic bracelet, silently and at a brisk pace towards the waiting car. This is how Antonio Panzeri, ringleader of the corruption scheme known as QatarGate, has left the Brussels Saint-Gilles prison. The Italian is under house arrest. A path that will be followed in the next few hours by the former vice-president of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, the only person charged with the bribery scheme who remains behind bars. With her passage to probation, there will be no one involved in the biggest corruption scandal of the European Parliament behind bars.
Kaili’s release from Haren prison will take effect between Friday and Monday, according to the EFE news agency, and she will be placed under house arrest as soon as the bureaucratic prison procedure is concluded. The decision will be reviewed in two months. His partner Francesco Giorgi, also accused, already made this path three weeks ago. Giorgi assured that he would collaborate and exonerated his sentimental partner of all responsibility. It is unknown if, after Kaili’s departure, both will remain together in her residence together with their two-year-old daughter.
Marc Tarabella, a former Socialist MEP, has also been released from jail this week. While the fifth protagonist Andrea Cozzolino remains in Italy under supervised release, refusing to surrender to the Belgian Justice. The charges against the five are very serious: corruption, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization. It is the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the European Parliament. And to see a precedent of such magnitude, one must go back to the en bloc resignation in 1999 of the entire European Commission, headed by Jacques Santer at the time.
“Eva Kaili leaves prison with her head held high and with dignity. She has not confessed to any crime she did not commit and will fight for her innocence to the end,” said her lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos. While the Greek Social Democrat, who is a loose verse of PASOK and is the most wanted face in this plot, continues to maintain her innocence, Panzeri reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office in January to tell everything and cooperate in exchange for a sentence reduction. Also Qatar and Morocco, the countries that would have spread their tentacles over the corridors of the European Parliament to whiten its image and to alter European decision-making, deny its involvement.
Since it exploded in December, the history of QatarGate has not had excess elements more typical of fiction than of political reality. Kaili’s father was literally caught with suitcases loaded with money leaving a famous hotel in the community capital. Once behind bars, Kaili herself denounced that she was subjected to “inhumane” conditions and “torture” for having little light and blankets in her cell. The judicial investigation detected the involvement of up to five different intelligence agencies in the plot. Millions of euros and even black cards were seized that allegedly would have been courtesy of the kingdom of Morocco. Four months later, the judicial process is still expected to be long and more surprises are not ruled out.
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