A European parliament committee has voted to lift immunity from two MEPs after a request from Belgian authorities investigating the “Qatargate” bribery and corruption scandal that has shaken the EU assembly.
MEPs on the European parliament’s legal affairs committee voted unanimously with no abstentions on Tuesday to strip immunity from Belgium’s Marc Tarabella and Italy’s Andrea Cozzolino.
The European parliament is widely expected to endorse the committee’s view when it votes on Thursday, formally triggering the end of immunity from prosecution for both MEPs.
The immunity waiver request came from Belgian authorities, who have charged four people with bribery, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation in relation to alleged payments from Qatar. The four – the former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, the serving Greek MEP Eva Kaili, her Italian MEP assistant, Francesco Giorgi, and the head of a Brussels NGO, Niccolò Figà-Talamanca – have been detained in pre-trial detention.
Like Tarabella and Cozzolino, Panzeri and Kaili were members of the European parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group. The three serving MEPs have been expelled from the bloc.
Kaili lost her immunity automatically, because prosecutors believed they had caught her red-handed. Under Belgian law, MEPs do not have immunity from prosecution if they are allegedly caught in the act of a crime.
Police seized arbout €150,000 (£130,000) from the Brussels flat she shared with her fellow suspect Giorgi. On the same day, Kaili’s father was stopped trying to leave a Brussels hotel with €750,000 stashed in luggage, although later released without charge.
Earlier this month Panzeri signed a plea bargain deal with prosecutors agreeing to provide evidence in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. According to leaks from the investigation to the Belgian press, Panzeri said he had given €120,000 to Tarabella.
Kaili, Tarabella and Cozzolino have denied all charges of wrongdoing. Giorgi’s lawyer has declined to comment, while Figà-Talamanca’s family have strongly denied all charges of wrongdoing on his behalf.
Police searched Tarabella’s Brussels home last month, but he has never been charged.
In a leaked letter to the committee, Tarabella said he welcomed the lifting of his immunity “being fully aware of the possible consequences” so he could defend his name. Declaring that he had never received money or gifts in exchange for his political opinions, he wrote: “I am judged by public opinion or by some of my colleagues on the basis of press articles or the self-interested confessions of imprisoned people, who have apparently changed over time, contrary to my position.”
Through his lawyer, Cozzolino has declared his “total innocence”, describing the request to lift his immunity as based on “a hypothesis of the investigation”.
Cozzolino appeared before the legal affairs committee earlier this month to defend himself, but Tarabella waived his right to do so.
Manon Aubry, the French radical left MEP who was in charge of preparing the formal proposals to lift their immunity, told Belgium’s Francophone public broadcaster RTBF that she hoped lifting immunity would throw light on the scandal “because to date we only have the tip of the iceberg”. She said: “There are missing pieces of the puzzle and I hope that this lifting of immunity will help provide the other pieces of the puzzle.”
Qatar has also denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
