Marc Tarabella, deprived eight days ago of his parliamentary immunity due to a corruption scandal, was arrested by the police on Friday.
SourceAFP
© KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP
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IHe had been saying for two months that he was ready to respond to justice. Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella was taken into custody on Friday February 10 in the investigation into suspicions of corruption within the European Parliament involving Qatar and Morocco.
The 59-year-old elected socialist, deprived of his parliamentary immunity on February 2, was arrested early Friday at his home in the Liège region in the east of the country. He was brought to Brussels to be heard in the premises of the federal judicial police. “The investigating judge will decide on a possible appearance in the next few hours,” said the federal prosecutor’s office.
A decision on a possible placement in pre-trial detention must be taken within 48 hours maximum after the arrest. Alongside this, several offices of the town hall of Anthisnes (East) – where Marc Tarabella is mayor – were searched, added the prosecution. Another search targeted “a bank vault located in Liège” belonging to him.
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His home searched
The name of Marc Tarabella, an elected football enthusiast who has spoken a lot in the European Parliament on the subject of the organization of the 2022 World Cup by Qatar, appeared very early when this scandal broke out on December 9.
The next day, December 10, his home in Anthisnes had been searched, in the presence of the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola, as required by law for a Belgian MEP. But no cash had been discovered, and he had not been arrested, unlike Greek MEP Eva Kaili, caught in “flagrante delicto” the day before in Brussels, and therefore deprived of the benefit of immunity.
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Eva Kaili, stripped of her post as Vice-President of Parliament in December, is one of the three people currently imprisoned in this case, with her companion, parliamentary assistant Francesco Giorgi, and former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, also Italian.
More than 100,000 euros paid?
Pier Antonio Panzeri, key suspect in the case, now “repentant” since he admitted to having orchestrated this interference by several foreign powers in European politics, implicated Marc Tarabella before the investigators.
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According to the Belgian press, the Italian claimed in December to have paid “between 120,000 and 140,000 euros” in several installments to the Belgian elected official, for his help in matters related to Qatar. Last November, before Parliament, the Belgian MEP welcomed positive changes in the emirate on the issue of workers’ rights.
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“There has been progress, it must be recognized […]unilaterally negative discourse appears to me to be detrimental to the development of rights in the future in Qatar,” said Marc Tarabella.
“I want justice to do its job”
The tone has changed. Seven years earlier, in 2015, Marc Tarabella had described the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar as a “casting error”, recalled the Belgian press. The Belgian elected official then castigated the lack of transparency of Fifa in this attribution. AT Brussels, during the wave of arrests on December 9, the investigators got their hands on 1.5 million euros in cash, in particular at the homes of Pier Antonio Panzeri and Eva Kaili.
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Marc Tarabella denied having received “money or gifts in exchange for [ses] Political Views “. The authorities of Qatar and Morocco have also strongly denied these suspicions of corruption. Another elected member of the European Parliament, the Italian Andrea Cozzolino, is in the crosshairs of the judge in charge of the investigation. His parliamentary immunity was lifted at the same time as that of Marc Tarabella, on February 2, by a plenary vote of the only elected institution of the EU.
That day in Brussels, Marc Tarabella had himself voted to lift his immunity, saying he was ready to answer questions from investigators. “I want justice to do its job,” he said.