The Belgian police have been investigating for four months a corruption, money laundering and criminal organization scheme in which Qatari envoys allegedly paid bribes to several MEPs and staff of the European Parliament, whose headquarters in Brussels were searched again on Monday, while the plenary session was being held in Strasbourg (France).
The searches throughout this Monday have been carried out in a dozen offices of MEP assistants who were already sealed on Friday when the first inspections and arrests were made in connection with the case, as reported by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.
In parallel and together with Eurojust, the agency in charge of judicial cooperation, searches were also carried out in Italy, the Prosecutor’s Office said, without giving further details on that branch of the investigation.
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said from the opening session of the plenary session in Strasbourg that she is «proud» of the way in which the institution has collaborated in the investigation, while expressing her «anger, rage and sadness» for the facts investigated.
The Belgian authorities have arranged for synchronization between their investigators and the European institution, which allowed, for example last Friday, with the help of the parliamentary security services to «freeze» the computer devices of several people to prevent information that could be relevant to the investigation from disappearing.
«The enemies of democracy for whom the existence of Parliament is a threat will not stop. Their malicious plan has failed, our services, of which I am incredibly proud, have worked with national law enforcement and judicial authorities to break this criminal network,» Metsola summed up.
Metsola, in fact, had to accompany the Belgian authorities during one of the searches carried out at the home of an MEP because this is required by the Belgian Constitution in investigations involving national MPs.
In total, the Belgian authorities have carried out about twenty searches and six people were questioned, four of whom were arrested and will testify in court on Wednesday.
Among those arrested, the Greek MEP Eva Kaili, one of the fourteen vice-presidents of the European Parliament whose removal from office is about to be decided by the plenary session in Strasbourg, but whom Metsola has already stripped of her representative functions and responsibilities.
Investigators found nearly 600,000 euros in cash at her home, «hundreds of thousands» of euros in a suitcase in a Brussels hotel – in the possession of Kaili’s father, according to several Belgian media – and another 150,000 euros in the home of another MEP.
