The mystery of the untouched lawmaker at the heart of Qatargate – POLITICO

BRUSSELS — A few months before confessing to the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the European Parliament, Pier Antonio Panzeri had some advice for a friend.

“Don’t put yourself out of the game,” Panzeri told the Belgian MEP Maria Arena in August 2022 during a meal at the now-defunct Salvarino pizzeria in Brussels. “Because if you are in the game, then I am going to amass more money.”

Unbeknownst to the pair, Belgian spies were taping their conversation as part of an investigation into what would become known as Qatargate, according to a police summary of a declassified secret services report seen by POLITICO.

Four months later, Panzeri, a former MEP, was arrested and accused of being at the center of a bribery ring pushing the interests of Morocco, Qatar and Mauritania in Parliament. Police found more than €600,000 in cash at his home. Three sitting MEPs were arrested and handed preliminary charges: Eva Kaili, Marc Tarabella and Andrea Cozzolino, all of whom deny criminal wrongdoing.

Not among those rounded up: Arena.

The nature of Arena’s involvement — or lack of involvement — in Qatargate is one of the scandal’s most enduring mysteries. Investigative files seen by POLITICO reveal that Belgian authorities have amassed evidence showing she was close to Panzeri, met with Qatari and Moroccan officials accused of leading their country’s corruption efforts, and took actions in Parliament favorable to both countries.

And yet, nearly a year since the corruption scandal broke, investigators seem unable to determine whether she was a knowing participant — or merely an innocent, if deeply naïve, victim of her close political collaborators.

Arena — who inherited Panzeri’s prestigious chairmanship of the Parliament’s human rights committee when he retired in 2019 — has steadfastly maintained her innocence. She has not been arrested, charged or even questioned by Belgian authorities. Police raided her properties in July and asked federal prosecutors to petition the Parliament to lift her immunity — according to two people familiar with the investigation. 

The Belgian prosecutor’s office said last week that it would not request the lifting of  Arena’s immunity because there is no justification for doing so, criticizing “numerous false statements recently published in certain media and linked to this case.”

The announcement implies the prosecutor’s office “does not plan to prosecute” Arena, her lawyers Michèle Hirsch and Morgan Bonneure said in a statement Monday. They called on investigators to formally question her so she can clear her name.

“All the accusations and insinuations that Maria Arena is subject to are unfounded and inaccurate,” they wrote. 

Marc Uyttendaele, a lawyer for Panzeri, said he would not comment publicly on the case.

In January, Arena gave up her role as chair of the human rights committee after POLITICO revealed she failed to declare a trip paid by Qatar (for which she blamed her assistant). Since then, she has kept a low profile, while going about her job as an MEP in the Socialists and Democrats grouping.

‘Tight collaboration’

Belgian investigators place Arena at the corruption ring’s very center, but they haven’t been able to establish whether she was part of it or just innocently caught up in it. 

Panzeri and his assistant Francesco Giorgi “seem to work in very tight collaboration” with Arena, according to a police summary of a January 2023 note from the Belgian secret services. “They also give her advice, instructions, and they organize her agenda as well as some of her meetings.”

Arena “would take on actions that were initiated by Panzeri before (organizing meetings, debates, orientations, press statements, etc),” Giorgi told investigators, according to transcripts of statements he made to police. He added that she was one of the most important people in the network. Two police notes also state that she “works for the network.”

In his statements, Giorgi, who has been charged with corruption, acknowledged playing a major role in the scheme. His lawyer Pierre Monville wrote in an email: “As you know this case is particularly touchy, and I can not make any comment about the ongoing investigation.”

Arena was one of the first people that Giorgi’s partner Eva Kaili — a former Parliament vice-president — called in a panic after his arrest on December 9, according to a transcript of Kaili’s statements to the police in an interview 10 days later. 

Kaili was also arrested and jailed on December 9. 

In a conversation with the police, Kaili described Arena as Panzeri’s “alter-ego,” according to a legal order issued by the investigative judge to look into Arena’s communications in July this year.

The European Parliament has few legislative powers on human rights, but it wields soft power to pressure abusive regimes across the globe by voting on monthly resolutions and holding debates in the human rights subcommittee, known as DROI, which was chaired by Panzeri from 2017 to 2019, then by Arena until she stepped down in 2023.

In a December 2021 conversation recorded by the Belgian secret services, Panzeri told Arena she should stay in the human rights committee “for reasons we know.”

“I know it,” Arena replied, according to the transcript. 

Arena was part of a “quadrumvirate” of MEPs who “struck with precision” to knock out parliamentary work critical of Qatar in December 2021, according to text messages sent to Panzeri from one of his former parliamentary assistants that are quoted in an arrest warrant for Cozzolino. A year later in the lead-up to the FIFA World Cup, Arena and Panzeri discussed blocking another resolution about Qatar, this time by Raphaël Glucksmann, Arena’s colleague from the Socialists group, according to police transcripts of their conversations by phone.

Arena’s name also appears 16 times in an Excel spreadsheet that Panzeri’s former assistant Giorgi told police he used as proof that he and his boss were delivering influence operations for Qatar and Morocco, according to Giorgi’s statements to police, as well as a copy of the document itself. 

According to Giorgi’s spreadsheet, Arena attacked the human rights record of Morocco’s rival Algeria, praised Qatar’s labor reforms in an official press release, promoted Panzeri’s Fight Impunity NGO in the Parliament, and organized a debate critical of the United Arab Emirates in her committee. Qatar and the UAE are regional rivals.

“In Panzeri’s network, there are two kinds of actors,” Giorgi told the police in an interview. “Those who are aware of the organization and corruption [and] those who feel obliged.”

Arena has insisted she was not paid, or even influenced, by anyone. 

According to transcripts of Tarabella’s police interview, Arena told him after the scandal broke: “I have the impression that they’ve monetized us.”

‘Professional friendship’

In addition to working together, Panzeri and Arena were personally close. Arena told POLITICO earlier this year that her relationship with Panzeri was a “professional friendship.” 

“I do not know if they had agreements,” Giorgi told police investigators.

Emails seen by POLITICO show that Arena organized a surprise 65th birthday party for Panzeri at her home in June 2020. At Panzeri’s apartment in Schaerbeek — a stone’s throw from where Arena lives — he was using a photo of Arena as a bookmark, according to the Belgian secret services’ findings on Arena summarized by the police.

Panzeri and Giorgi have sung different tunes when it comes to Arena in their statements to investigators.

In notes found by police in his apartment, Giorgi described her as Panzeri’s “fundamental pillar of action.” Panzeri, by contrast, cleared Arena of any wrongdoing — with tears in his eyes, according to his lawyers.

Arena has also had Panzeri’s back. When the scandal exploded, she helped him find a legal team, she said in an interview with French-language newspapers.

What might Arena have gotten out of this relationship?

Panzeri proposed to help Arena rise to a human rights position at the U.N., according to Kaili’s conversations with police, or to become the EU’s special representative for human rights, according to Giorgi. (Arena said she had been approached for the EU role.) 

“It seems to us to be particularly striking that Maria Arena would be the only one to occupy a key post in the network without benefiting from any kind of compensation,” police wrote in a confidential document.

Qatar connection

Since the scandal broke, Arena has denied that her parliamentary work was unduly influenced in favor of Qatar, Morocco or Mauritania.

In January, she told POLITICO she had not renewed an informal “memorandum of understanding” Panzeri had struck with the Qatari government when he ran the human rights committee.

This does not square with her own words or internal emails from the Parliament obtained by POLITICO.

Arena mentioned “our protocol between them [the Qataris] and the subcommittee” in an email to senior EU official Mychelle Rieu in February 2020. In another interview that year, Arena talked about Panzeri’s deal as being still active, threatening to bin it if she didn’t see progress on human rights from Qatar.

The spreadsheet Giorgi used to justify payments from Qatar and Morocco lists the “renewal of the memorandum between QATAR & DROI” during her stewardship of the committee.

Arena also met with Panzeri’s closest contacts in the Qatari government. Public records and police files show that she met Qatar’s Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri — the person investigators have accused in an application for an international arrest warrant of leading his country’s corruption effort — at least four times in three years during his visits to Parliament.

The last meeting, which happened just before the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, was the most sensitive: Al Marri was in Arena’s committee to field questions from European lawmakers on the labor rights of construction workers  — which had been at the center of a heated debate in Europe, amid calls from politicians to boycott the competition.

In a statement to police, Giorgi said that he and Panzeri prepped Al Marri for the meeting, with Panzeri even dictating the Qatari minister’s speech.

When Al Marri’s grilling was over, Arena immediately called Panzeri, according to a transcript of a conversation secretly recorded by the police. 

“You have been excellent,” Panzeri told her.

“So, is the minister happy?” she asked.

In text messages the pair exchanged in January 2022, Panzeri told her to reserve time slots to meet Qatari officials and informed her that a Qatari woman would arrive in Brussels on February 18. Arena met Maryam bint Abdullah Al Attiyah, who succeeded Al Marri as head of Qatar’s national human rights body, that day, according to Arena’s declarations.

Uncle Atmoun

Arena was also acquainted with Panzeri’s connection to Morocco, Rabat’s ambassador to Poland Abderrahim Atmoun.

Arena dined with Atmoun and Panzeri at the Gioia Italian restaurant in Brussels in January 2022. According to a police summary of a transcript of their conversation taped by the Belgian secret service, Atmoun invited Arena and Panzeri for a “work” trip in Marrakech or Essaouira.

When Arena told the diplomat her son Ugo Lemaire also planned to go to Morocco, Atmoun said he should reach out to “Uncle Atmoun” when he arrived. Later that year, Lemaire made a trip that was paid for by a company in Casablanca, according to a police report.

Seven months later, the secret services officers recorded Arena telling Panzeri how she had done a “speed vote” on an amendment to a parliamentary report that said Morocco exploits the resources of Western Sahara, a disputed territory south of the country where Rabat has waged a decades-long fight against a national liberation movement.

Arena and Panzeri visited Morocco together in 2015, a trip Arena says she used to push for the traceability of products from Western Sahara. According to Panzeri’s statements to the police, Atmoun paid for their stay in the five-star hotel La Mamounia in Marrakech without Arena’s knowledge.

The fresh revelations about Arena pile more questions on an investigation at risk of collapse. Lawyers for the official suspects have asked that the case be thrown out, arguing that prosecutors mishandled the investigation.

Michel Claise, the judge leading the inquiry stepped down in the summer after it was revealed that his son was in business with Arena’s son Lemaire. 

So far, Arena continues to enjoy the support of her political allies. While Tarabella was suspended by his party after police raided his home, Arena remains a member.

Her S&D group put her forward — unsuccessfully, as it turned out — to be the EU’s chief observer of upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a trip that the EU later canceled. 

“Our client wishes neither to comment nor react to the questions that seem biased and which are based on elements we do not have access to,” Arena’s lawyers wrote in an email to POLITICO, highlighting that she has not been accused as part of the ongoing investigation.

In their public statement, they said that if she were to be interviewed by police, “Arena proposes to give her point of view in public” if needed.