The Greek socialist MEP Eva Kaili, accused of being involved in a corruption scheme linked to the European Parliament that shelters Qatar, will remain in preventive detention, a Belgian court of first instance determined on Thursday.
“The council chamber extended the preventive detention of EK [Eva Kaili] for a month,” the Belgian prosecutor’s office said in a statement issued hours after the court hearing in Brussels.
Eva Kaili’s lawyers can appeal this decision, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The defense of the Greek socialist MEP had asked the court today for her release with an electronic bracelet.
“We ask that Kaili be placed under electronic surveillance with a bracelet, [até porque] actively participates in the investigation and rejects any act of corruption”, explained the lawyer.
“She is innocent, she has never been corrupted,” said her Greek lawyer, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, who traveled from Athens to Brussels for the hearing and visited the MEP in Harem prison on Wednesday, where Kaili has been held for two weeks.
On charges of criminal organisation, corruption and money laundering, Belgian police arrested several suspects on December 9, including former European Parliament Vice-President Eva Kaili, who has since been ousted from her post and withdrawn from the Socialists and Democrats, and now not – deputy deputy.
Kaili’s partner, Francesco Giorgi, and former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri were also arrested in an operation that resulted in the seizure of suitcases with money for a total of 1.5 million euros.
The Greek MEP was arrested despite enjoying parliamentary immunity because the Belgian authorities considered that she had been found in flagrante delicto.
Italian trade unionist Luca Visentini and the father of the former vice-president of the European Parliament, Alessandro Kailis, were also arrested on 9 December but released two days later.
The ‘lobbyist’ and general secretary of the non-governmental organization There is no peace without justice, Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, was released, although with the obligation to wear an electronic bracelet.
The case also involves two other MEPs, Belgian Socialist Marc Tarabella, whose house was searched without charges but who was suspended from his party in Belgium, and Italian Socialist Andrea Cozzolino, also suspended from the European Parliament’s Socialist group. .
The two swore they were innocent, since Cozzolino made public that he wants to testify before a judge and that he is willing to waive his parliamentary immunity.
The lawyers of the Greek politician, an MEP since 2014 and one of the 14 vice-presidents of the European Parliament since January 2022, have criticized the numerous leaks of information, announcing today that the Belgian Public Ministry has opened an investigation.
According to information from Belgian and Italian media such as Le Soir and La Republicca, Kaili confessed to the police his involvement in the plot and acknowledged that he asked his father for help to hide the money he had at home.
Giorgi, Kaili’s partner, will also have confessed his involvement in the plot, denying any responsibility for the partner and mother of his daughter, while Panzeri will have acknowledged having received payments of 50,000 euros from Qatar and Morocco in 2019, after having abandoned his mandate that he held between 2004 and 2019.
Source: TSF
