Qatargate: Italian politician Panzeri emerges as kingpin, as raids discover cash, luxury watches

Italian union’s head-turned-politician Pier Antonio Panzeri came out as the kingpin of the Qatar bribery scandal in the international investigation that has rocked the EU parliament. 

Qatar and Morocco are facing allegations of bribing EU legislators to control policy and taking help from a network of non-governmental organisations to conceal the corrupt dealings.

Panzeri, who was the European parliament’s socialist member between 2004 and 2019, is among the four people who face charges of money laundering, corruption and being involved in a criminal group after €600,000 in cash was seized by the police at his residence in Brussels.

Meanwhile, another suitcase of cash amounting to €600,000 was found in possession of Greek MEP Eva Kaili’s father, which she claimed belonged to Panzeri.

During the raid at the Italian politician’s homes in Lombardy, the prosecutors seized luxury watches and €17,000 in cash. The investigation into the bribery scandal has shaken the establishment of Brussels to the core as it continues to expose the involvement of non-governmental organisations, foreign powers and legislators. 

After Panzeri left the parliament in 2019, he established a human rights group called Fight Impunity in Brussels. With the help of contacts Panzeri built when he was the chairperson of a parliament group in charge of relations with Morocco, along with other Arab nations, Fight Impunity easily became an important organisation in a chamber filled with 13,000 registered lobbyists, along with other unregistered lobbyists competing for influence. 

Transparency International’s Report

Meanwhile, the anti-corruption group Transparency International EU (TI EU) said that an independent ethics regulator is needed in the EU institutions.

It further noted that the scandal is “egregious” but not the only incident that has taken place in an institution labelled by a “culture of impunity”.

Transparency International’s director MEP Michiel van Hulten said: “Over many decades, the parliament has allowed a culture of impunity to develop, with a combination of lax financial rules and controls and a complete lack of independent (or indeed any) ethics oversight.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more undue influence behind the scenes, sometimes involving money being passed over the table,” he said.

WATCH| Qatar ‘corruption scandal’ rocks European parliament, Vice President Eva Kaili arrested

In its report, TI EU analysed around 28,000 lobby meetings that the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) had published between June 2019 and July 2022.

In this period, the publication system of the Parliament was used by only half of the MEPs. The overall meeting publication decreased from 9,700 meetings in the first year to 9,300 in the last year.

In the report, it was highlighted that there are only some member states who have a large number of MEPs whose single meetings have been published in three years, Luxembourg with 100%, Sweden with 95% and Denmark with 93% being the top three.

However, some EU members have been lagging badly which includes Latvia 25%, Cyprus 17% and Greece 10%. A similar gap in transparency is evident in the analysis of political groups.

(With inputs from agencies)