heard

Corruption

MEP Marie Arena (PS) will be heard on Friday in the so-called Qatargate case. Le Soir and RTBF report this. The federal public prosecutor cannot yet confirm whether Arena is being interrogated as a suspect, as both media reports.

For the time being, the federal public prosecutor’s office only confirms that the interrogation of the MEP was scheduled for Friday. Marie Arena’s name has already come up several times in the investigation into MEPs and employees who were allegedly paid by Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania to lobby in their favor.

At the end of November, an older State Security report came to light about suspicious contacts between Arena and the Italian former European Parliament member Antonio Panzeri. The man is considered one of the key figures in Qatar corruption. Another 600,000 euros in cash was found in his house in 2022. Panzeri has now become regretful.

Good friends

The report writes that Panzeri and Arena had called each other no fewer than 389 times between December 2021 and September 2022. “Panzeri was a good friend,” Arena says. But reports indicate that the Belgian State Security (VSSE) viewed Arena as a link in the lobby machine.

Arena had regular physical and telephone contact with all protagonists in the Qatar dossier. Also with Panzeri’s former employee Francesco Giorgi and his wife MEP Eva Kaili. After a search of that couple’s house in 2022, exactly 878,355 euros was found. In the wiretapped conversations, Panzeri and Giorgi are said to have given Arena advice and instructions in her work as chair of the Human Rights subcommittee in the European Parliament. In the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, that committee often had to consider the state of human rights in Qatar. Arena then expressed himself positively about Qatar in that respect on social media. She even traveled there in 2022 and is said to have received expensive gifts.

Corruption or drugs

According to State Security, it did not stop there. Arena is also said to have intervened in Morocco’s favor in a vote on Western Sahara in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Her son is also said to maintain close contacts with the Moroccan diplomat Abderrahim Atmoun. He is the man who is said to have controlled the lobby network around Panzeri for Morocco.

During a search of her son Ugo L.’s house on July 19, 280,000 euros in cash was found. They also found a precision scale and four GPS trackers. The investigators initially suspected a connection with Qatargate, but it now appears more and more that Ugo L. is involved in a cannabis traffic from Morocco.

Arena has always maintained that she was not influenced or bribed, and Panzeri has always rejected her.