The Qatargate saga does not seem destined to finish, the investigation into the alleged corruption by countries such as Qatar and Morocco of deputies and assistants of the European Parliament. Now to end up in the sights of the investigators would be two other Italians of the Democratic Party: Alessandra Moretti and Elisabetta Gualmini.
This was reported by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, the newspaper that has always been the most informed on the scandal that broke out in December 2022, and the news was confirmed by some parliamentary sources also to the ANSA Agency. According to the newspaper, the Federal Prosecutor of Belgium asked the European Parliament for the revocation of immunity for the two parliamentarians and the request should be made official on Monday by the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, at the opening of the new plenary session, before being subjected to the legal affairs commission.
The Qatargate investigation seemed now on a dead track and many of the initial accusations had fallen a year and a half after the arrests that in 2022 had shocked the community political environments. The investigation into the alleged foreign corrupts had passed a few months ago from the Belgian authorities to the Moroccan ones and some of the suspects in Belgium are still waiting to know what the facts are really attributed to them.
The suspicions about Moretti
As the Soir Moretti reconstructs, considered close to the mind of the Qatarta Antonio Panzeri but who has always denied any involvement in the story, ended up in the spotlights of the investigators because he was in Qatar for a visit that also included the visit of a construction site for the construction of a stadium for the future football world football together with the Belgian Marc Tarabella, another suspect. It would have been precisely to clean up the face of Qatar regarding the respect of human rights that would have been paid, according to the investigation, large sums of money.
Moretti had also intervened in a meeting of the parliamentary commission for human rights, a meeting that ended up in the center of the case: the hearing of Ali Bin Samikh at Marri, the Minister of Labor of Qatar, on November 14, 2022. As the Belgian newspaper Moretti had reconstructed to the Minister, he had addressed a question deemed suspicious, in which he referred to the previous World Cup in Russia.
The “World Championships of shame”, the EU Parliament against Qatar
Giorgi’s pressures
The investigators affirm that according to their interceptions, a few seconds first Panzeri had given telephone orders to his former assistant and right arm, Francesco Giorgi, saying: “Listen to it to do an intervention saying: ‘But I did not see all this interest four years ago, when the World Cup was in Russia'”.
Giorgi, together with his wife, the Greek deputy Eva Kaili, was one of the arrested in the raids of December 2022: in their home, in that of the father and in a hotel room where the latter had housed hundreds of thousands of euros in cash were found. Money that according to the investigators would have been given by representatives of the Qatar so that the two worked to soften the positions of the European Parliament deputies against the country.
Also according to the reconstructions of Le Soir, in December 2021, when a resolution was in the air that criticized respect for human rights in Qatar in the context of the World Cup that then took place in the country, another former parliamentary assistant of Panzeri (postponed to trial last December) sent an SMS with the written “Qatar resolved” followed by the phrase “The Quadrohiumvirato Cozzolino – Moretti – Arena – precision, attention and efficiency “. With the exception of Moretti, the other three deputies in the SMS have already been indicted.
And those on Gualmini
As for the suspicions against Gualmini, the Soir recalls that his name emerged in the dossier on November 15, 2022, in the aftermath of the famous audition with the Minister of Labor of Qatar. That day, Panzeri and Giorgi had fought to block the drafting and vote of a potential resolution of the classroom on human rights in Qatar. Giorgi would have exchanged with Gualmini a series of text messages that were recovered by the investigators.
The deputy would have told Giorgi that “he could no longer expose himself” but that he would become “more aggressive with time”. Gualmini had then explained to Le soir that during the discussion he then “decided not to follow the line indicated by some MEPs and Giorgi”, ensuring that he intervened in favor of the debate in the plenary “.
