December 13 – A Belgian judge has charged four people after the seizure of €600,000 in cash and detained members of the European Parliament as part of an international investigation into claims that football World Cup host Qatar sought to buy influence, rocking the heart of the continent’s politics.
The judge charged four unnamed people on Sunday with “participation in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption” following multiple arrests and house searches over the weekend, including the homes of two MEPs and a former MEP’s family in Italy.
The investigation and scandal come at a delicate time as Qatar is hosting the World Cup, the first global finals to be staged in an Arab country. This week sees the denouement of the tournament with Argentina, Croatia, France and Morocco contesting the semi-finals. On Sunday, new – or in France’s case the reigning – world champions will be crowned at Lusail Stadium.
The final coincides with Qatar National Day and will mark the end of a years-long soft-power project that has put Qatar on the world map.
Doha has rejected any allegations of misconduct.
“Any association of the Qatari government with the reported claims is baseless and gravely misinformed,” an official said.
A vice-president of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, has been suspended from her duties in the legislature as well as her membership in Pasok, the Greek socialist party. Kaili had been defending Qatar’s human rights record, the object of great scrutiny in the Western media, by saying that the country was a “frontrunner in labour rights”.
In an interview with Greek TV, her lawyer denied that she took bribes from Qatar. Euronews however reports that Kaili will be stripped of her position altogether.
On Monday, Belgian police made fresh raids including one on a European parliamentary office.
In a statement, Belgium’s Federal Prosecutors Office said that the IT resources of 10 parliamentary staff had been “frozen” to prevent the “disappearance of data necessary for the investigation”. They went on to say that the purpose of the search at the European Parliament was “to seize this data”.
The European Parliament has reacted to the ever-widening corruption investigation. Parliament President Roberta Metsola spoke about the “enemies of democracy for whom the very existence of this Parliament is a threat, will stop at nothing.”
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