“I never received any money or gifts,” he continues to defend. Belgian Socialist MEP Marc Tarabella, whose justice requested the lifting of immunity in the alleged corruption case in the European Parliament, claimed his innocence and denounced the “interested confessions” of a key suspect, in a letter seen Thursday by AFP. The Belgian elected official was excluded on Wednesday by the S&D group (Socialists & Democrats) in the European Parliament and by the Belgian Socialist Party, during the investigation.
He was implicated by the former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri – one of the four suspects currently imprisoned in this case involving in particular Qatar -, who told investigators that he had paid the Belgian “between 120,000 and 140,000 euros”, according to the newspaper l’Écho.
“I never received any money”
“Today, I still haven’t had the right to defend myself. I claim and will still claim my innocence. I have never received money or gifts in exchange for my political opinions,” said Marc Tarabella in an email sent to the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs.
“I am judged by public opinion or by some of my colleagues on the basis of press articles or self-serving confessions of incarcerated people, confessions which have apparently changed over time contrary to my position”, denounces it again.
Pier Antonio Panzeri, who is a central figure in the case, has reached an agreement with the justice at the end of which he undertook to give information to the investigators in exchange for a limited prison sentence. A status of “repentant” modeled on the Italian anti-mafia practice.
The home of the elected official in the Liège region had been searched on December 10 as part of the investigation but no cash had been discovered. The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament must decide on the requests for the waiver of immunity of Marc Tarabella and another Socialist MEP, the Italian Andrea Cozzolino, transmitted at the beginning of January by the Belgian justice.
According to a parliamentary source, she wanted to hear Marc Tarabella on Tuesday. What the latter “decline”, explaining that he will not speak “to the press or to anyone before having spoken to the judicial authorities who alone are able to guarantee a quality investigation and a fair procedure”. “It also seems to me that the question of the lifting of my immunity does not have to be debated; it must, of course, be lifted,” he said.