The city of Strasbourg in France is the official seat of the European Parliament. A judicial investigation in Belgium since December 2022 rocked Europe and sent shockwaves to Europe involving plausible bribery implicating MEPs on the charge of receiving huge sums of money and free trips to the World Cup from Morocco and Mauritania and Qatar. Europe has been shocked by Belgian authorities’ investigation and Members of Parliament behavior in taking bribes from Mauritania, Morocco and Qatar.
Late December, even before investigations were concluded, the European Parliament voted to stop all legislative work related to Qatar and bar the country’s representatives from parliamentary premises, expediting an exit of the Gulf state. This came shortly after headlining in Belgium media as QatarGate “one of the European Union’s biggest corruption scandals”. Doha was also hoping to finalize a deal on flight rights that would have given Qatar Airways unlimited access to the EU’s aviation market.
Nonetheless the Qatari government unequivocally denied any engagement in the scandal and stated that any accusation of misconduct is unfounded and contrived. Qatar imputed the blame on its regional adversaries for plotting the scandal.
Simultaneously Middle East Eye Analysts cautioned about a smear campaign launched against muslims in Europe. Islamic Relief Charity was the target in Europe.
Another key suspect disclosed by Judge Michel Claise is Morocco. MoroccoGate and EU Parliament’s so-called incident raised much uproar in the political sphere and media in Belgium. Nouvel Obs headlines that “it was [Judge Claise] who caused a political earthquake by detaining a vice-president of the European Parliament and seizing 1.5 million euros in cash.”
The article describes the collaborative and almost exclusive relations this Belgian judge prides in cultivating over his career. The arbitrariness of the judicial and police powers. Under the cloak of judicial independence, the judge, Michel Claise, was asked to be removed due to a conflict of interest. Nouvel Obs continues by making some alarming points, “Michel Claise… was repeatedly placed “in level 2 protection” by the police. Belgium is the country where the Minister of Justice, benefits from increased protection due to threats by drug cartels.
EU Parliament Marc Tarabella’s lawyer had requested in February that the investigating judge, Claise, be recused on the grounds that Michel Claise could be “biased” towards the MEP.
At the heart of the investigations are transactions into an NGO created by Panzeri, the arrested former Member of Parliament, Fight Impunity, which he co-founded, an essential cog in the system, described by Le Monde French daily. A Belgian investigator who confided in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica said that this type of behavior was “a real danger for the democratic balance”. Klaus Welle, the powerful German Secretary General of the European Parliament, was on the verge of becoming the NGO board member, La Republica Italian daily also published.
Politico EU media based in Brussels, also read, “It is not clear how or whether Fight Impunity as an organization may be involved in any questionable schemes, beyond the fact that it sits uncomfortably close to a web of alleged criminality.”
Former anti-corruption judge, Renaud Van Ruymbeke , even questioned how so much cash could be “found” in several suitcases; it would take a pretty hidden bank to not sound the alarm.
The investigation into the Members of EU Parliament, Panzeri, Kaili and Giorgi is far from rigorous and contravened the rule of law. Such populist rhetoric thrives on the vilification of an enemy through contrived leaks on partisan and biased media–all in an attempt to evoke mass hysteria for manipulation of the public.
Referring to https://thepointmag.com/politics/brace-for-impact/#
NGO’s and big foundations are not in the truth-telling business and are plumped up with some media headlines to raise their profile. The writer conveys that the reason is “compassion fatigue” by the general public and so, NGO’s turn to funders with an agenda. Respectable media have over the last few years published on how supposedly independent think tanks buy power and influence for foreign corporations and nations in Washington. But the funding of serious journalism by NGOs and big philanthropy still goes mostly unremarked. (A good sign was the Times’s recent hire of an investigative reporter to cover nonprofits.)
James Harkin continues by revealing that “regular journalism plumped up with NGO filler and paid for with foundation dough too easily becomes either risibly partisan …”. The general people long known to be far removed from the European Parliament representatives preferred to live by “ignorance is bliss” . The mass remains susceptible to media angles biased through powers by profit.
Ethical rules of the EU institutions are not harmonized: members and staff of the Commission, the Parliament and the Council are bound by different ethics frameworks with different obligations and enforcement mechanisms.The neo-colonialist agenda of expanding Belgium’s judicial credibility is destined to face a cloudy future. Still, there are judges in Belgium that hold fast to the principles of fairness and justice. To establish itself as paradigmatic in the global judiciary, Belgium needs to rid itself of the unscrupulous elements of its judicial system.
The judicial proceedings of the EU Parliament scandal had laid bare the shaky grounds for judicial fairness in Belgium. This attacks the reputation of Qatar, an established energy partner to Europe and the wealthiest nation in the world. The Belgian debacle was doomed from the beginning, and was a contrived tale of political intrigue aimed at tainting the reputation of Qatar and Morocco, although medias were keen to produce another XGate episode.
A British correspondent based in Brussels, Jack Parrock, told ANT1, Greek broadcaster, that “the scandal is only one aspect of the corruption that may be endemic in the European Parliament.” Such machination is a cautionary tale for the stability and reputation of the judicial system in Belgium in future.