Italian Francesco Giorgi, husband of former vice-president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, confessed his involvement in a bribery scandal involving that congress, Qatar and Morocco, and pointed out several people who would have participated in the scheme, reported this Thursday- fair (15) the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
Giorgi, 35 and father of a two-year-old daughter with Kaili, who is 44, admitted his guilt to police and the investigating judge during an interrogation conducted by Belgian authorities in the case that came to light last Friday.
The parliamentary assistant, whom the judge decided on Wednesday to detain temporarily, pointed out as involved in the scheme the former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzieri, in whose house 700 thousand euros were found in a search and seizure operation. He too has been charged and is being held.
Panzieri’s wife and daughter were detained in Italy, and Belgium has requested their extradition.
Giorgi also accused two other Social Democrat MPs: Belgian Marc Tarabella, whose home had already been searched by authorities as part of the investigation but who was at large, and Italian Andrea Cozzolino, for whom Giorgi worked as an assistant.
Kaili, on the other hand, is in pretrial detention and must testify before a judge on the 22nd, after being unable to appear on Wednesday due to a strike by civil servants.
In the searches, the police found hundreds of thousands of euros in cash at the home of Kaili and Giorgi, with whom she has had a relationship for five years.
The agents also surprised Kaili’s father leaving a Brussels hotel with bags of money, which allowed them to act despite the parliamentary immunity of Greek politics and understand that she was committing a flagrant crime.
New information revealed by Le Soir newspaper points increasingly strongly to Morocco, and not just Qatar, as the source of the bribes. In particular, the Moroccan ambassador to Poland, Abderrahim Atmoun, and two Moroccan secret service agents whose names have not been released.
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