Four detainees charged for the corruption case that shakes the European Parliament, including its vice president Eva Kaili

The Belgian judge in charge of the investigation of the alleged bribery of Qatar to MEPs and other members of the European Parliament has decided to charge four of the six detainees since Friday, including one of the vice-presidents of the European Parliament, the Greek Eva Kaili, and another former Italian MEP, as reported this Sunday by the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office.

The scandal now known as

, one of the biggest in the recent history of the European institutions, continues to threaten to widen its scope.

The police also searched on Saturday night the home of a second MEP, the Belgian Marc Tarabella.

Both he and Kaili, suspended on Saturday with "immediate effect" from all their functions by the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, are members of the social democratic group S&D, which quickly expressed its "zero tolerance for corruption" and called for it to " suspend work on any file and votes in plenary relating to the Gulf States”.

The four accused by the investigating judge in charge of the case are accused of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering and corruption, for which they have been placed under an arrest warrant, according to an official statement from the Prosecutor's Office.

The magistrate has decided, on the contrary, to release the other two detainees, whose names have not been officially revealed, at the end of the 48-hour period in which he could keep them in preventive arrest without charge.

According to the Belgian newspaper

, which announced the arrests on Friday in the framework of a judicial investigation that had been underway for several months, as well as other sources, among those arrested in the first operation and now charged include, in addition to Kaili, the former MEP Italian S&D Pier Antonio Panzeri.

After leaving his seat in 2019, Panzeri directed the Fight Impunity association, dedicated to the fight against human rights violations, which appears to be at the center of Belgian judicial investigations.

Another of the defendants is a former assistant to Panzeri and Kaili's partner, Francesco Giorgi, while the fourth would be a Brussels lobbyist whom

only identifies as "F".

The two released, always according to the Brussels newspaper, are Kaili's father, who had been arrested leaving a hotel in the Belgian capital with a suitcase full of money, and the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (CIS), Luca Visentini , who has been released on parole.

In the case of the Greek legislator, a 44-year-old former television presenter, the arrest was possible despite her parliamentary immunity because the offense attributed to her was found to be "in flagrante delicto", one of the grounds for arrest. to a MEP, a judicial source told Agence France Presse.

Within the framework of the first 16 searches carried out by the investigators, at least 600,000 euros were seized on Friday.

The Belgian justice system believes that Qatar - which it does not name, although the country has been identified as responsible for the alleged acts of bribery - offered "substantial sums of money" or "important gifts" to people with a "political position or significant strategic" in the European Parliament to achieve "influencing the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament".

The Qatari government has denied this Sunday any involvement in "inappropriate conduct" and has ensured that in its relations with institutions "it always operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations."

To the first batch of searches on Friday is now added that of Tarabella's house, carried out on Saturday with the presence of Metsola, who returned from Malta that same afternoon to attend the process, since Belgian law stipulates that the president of Parliament be present if the house of an elected member of Parliament in Belgium is searched, said a spokesman for the leader of the European Parliament.

Agents from the Central Office for the fight against corruption (OCRC, for its acronym in French) seized computer equipment, according to

The Belgian socialist MEP himself has not, however, been arrested for the moment, according to the newspaper.

gestures towards qatar

Both Tarabella and Kaili had recently multiplied their gestures towards Qatar despite the accusations of human rights violations - especially the death of foreign workers in the preparations for the World Cup - that weigh on the Gulf country.

Kaili, who has already been expelled from the Greek Social Democratic Party (Pasok), even said in a parliamentary session a few weeks ago that Qatar is "at the forefront" of labor rights.

After harshly denouncing the choice of Qatar as the venue for the World Cup, Tarabella, who is vice president of the parliamentary delegation with the Arabian Peninsula (DARP), has also significantly changed his discourse a year ago, multiplying his interventions in favor of the emirate, highlights

.

They are not the only MEPs who, in recent weeks and months, have made a sometimes surprising defense of the Gulf country, which in the new context that this judicial investigation opens has multiplied suspicions.

This situation predicts a strong tension in the last plenary session of the European Parliament that begins on Monday in Strasbourg, and which is already born with several requests from parliamentary groups to thoroughly investigate this case, stop any legislative initiative related to Qatar and neighboring countries and take strong measures, which should be directed both at the defendants and at improving the internal rules of conduct of a Parliament already accused in the past of opacity in its efforts and expenses.

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