Sifting through current accounts between Italy and Brazil
The hunt for the money of the “clique” has begun. As Repubblica explains, there are “seven bank current accounts in the crosshairs. The link between the Brussels investigation and the money hunt that started in Italy. Seven deposits in as many credit institutions, attributable to the former European deputy Antonio Panzeri, to his former assistant Francesco Giorgi (later moved to the offices of the Pd MEP Andrea Cozzolino), and to the general secretary of the international union Luca Visentini “.
It is not yet estimated how many have passed through those accounts. As Repubblica writes: “In the searches of the homes of the three suspects, watches had already been seized as well as cash, while in the interceptions Panzeri and his wife, Maria Colleoni, arrested together with their daughter Silvia Panzeri, speak of tropical holidays for a hundred thousand euros”. But according to the truth they are also looking abroad on other current accounts, particularly in Brazil.
Money also from South Africa and Morocco, involved Michel father
According to La Stampa, Panzeri’s NGO also received money from South Africa. While Il Fatto Quotidiano recounts how both Panzeri and “Louis Michel, Aged 75, he is a leading member of the French-speaking Belgian liberal party, the Reform Movement. He is the father of Charles Michel, the current president of the European Council.”
“The EU Council has also been influenced”
It is no coincidence that the Fact claims that the influence of the lobbies would reach as far as the EU Council, thus directly influencing EU foreign policy. This was supported by the “Special Commission on foreign interference in the European Union, including disinformation” (Inge1) in a document dated 9 March. “From the correspondence”, writes Il Fatto, “it emerges that the suspicions of pressure exerted by Doha had already been circulating for some time. And the Special Commission on foreign interference – it now turns out – does not exclude that they may have reached the offices of the European Council, the institution which defines general political guidelines and whose members are the heads of state and government”.
The Qatar-gate breaks into the Pd congress
The line of the Democratic Party towards Andrea Cozzolino, but also towards those who might be involved in the Qatargate scandal from now on, it will be the toughest. Enrico Letta’s choice to convene the party’s guarantee commission and the subsequent one suspension of the dem MEP was an unequivocal signalconfirmed by what is explained by the dem headquarters.
“The Democratic Party has given a firm and unequivocal response to the scandal that broke out in Brussels”, they say from the Nazarene: “Faced with the seriousness of the facts that have emerged, we have said clearly, from the beginning, that it is necessary to shed full light on everything and as soon as possible“. Hence the proposal to establish immediately a parliamentary commission of inquiry in Strasbourg, “with full powers and certain deadlines“.
And for this reason the dem have decided to form a civil party in the trial: “We are the injured party and we want the truth”, they say. Because the investigation that has now also touched the dem is one of those that can rock a party already strongly shaken by the electoral defeat and grappling with a difficult constituent and congressional path. Above all, it calls into question what seemed until recently a pillar of the identity of the Democratic Party: the centrality of the moral question. Formula coined by Enrico Berlinguer in 1981, in an interview with Eugenio Scalfari in which the then secretary of the PCI denounced the tendency of the parties to become exclusively “power and clientele machines”.
The story that exploded in Brussels says that the Democratic Party is no stranger to this trend. Among those who recall the moral question is Stefano Bonaccini that consider the story “stomach-turning”. The story, however, is destined to make itself heard in the ongoing confrontation for leadership in the party. Candidates and their supporters are quick to distance themselves from what is happening and promise, with different accents, a radical change in the ruling class.
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