An Italian MEP targeted by Belgian justice in the alleged corruption scandal for the benefit of Qatar and Morocco was arrested on Friday, Italian media reported. Andrea Cozzolino, who was in a clinic in Naples (south) for medical examinations, was arrested on leaving the clinic under a European arrest warrant, said the Ansa agency.
His immunity, as well as that of Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella, was lifted on February 2 by a vote of the European Parliament.
Other MEPs involved
According to a parliamentary report, Cozzolino, who until January was president of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the Maghreb, “is suspected of having participated in an agreement with other people which provided for collaboration in order to protect the interests of foreign states in the European Parliament”. And this “in particular by preventing the adoption of parliamentary resolutions which could harm the interests of these States, in exchange for sums of money. »
In this vast case of corruption, the Belgian investigators got their hands on 1.5 million euros in cash, seized from the homes of Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former socialist MEP who became a leader of an NGO and who is a central figure in this history, and Greek socialist MEP Eva Kaili, as well as in a suitcase carried by her father.
Like Panzeri, Kaili is imprisoned, as are her companion, the Italian Francesco Giorgi, parliamentary assistant, and another Italian, Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, head of an NGO. They are charged with “belonging to a criminal organization”, “money laundering” and “corruption”.