One of his favorite formulas is: « It is time for politicians to wake up. » He himself woke up some with his crackdown on December 9, by arresting MEPs Eva Kaili and Pier Antonio Panzeri in Brussels, before searching the home of their colleague Marc Tarabella the next day. The companion of Eva Kaili, the president of an NGO and a union leader have also fallen into the expert hands of judge Michel Claise. It was this man who triggered the “Qatargate”, now also called “Marocgate”, a devastating investigation for the European Parliament, suddenly confronted harshly with the realities of corruption and money laundering.
At 66, twenty-one of whom spent investigating financial crime cases, the former lawyer at the Brussels bar sees his fame spread throughout Europe. In Belgium, it had long since crossed the limits of Place Poelaert, where the huge courthouse erected in the 19e century on the old Mount of the Gallows. With his investigations into Swiss banks, elected officials, the world of football, a former boss of bosses or his hunt for Cyril Astruc, “the prince of the scam of the century” (a massive carbon tax fraud), Michel Claise has forged the image of a man who fears no one, and certainly not the powerful.
“There is even, in him, a deaf jubilation to align the names of the notables that he registers on his hunting list”, taunts one of his former colleagues at the bar. “When he locked up the Parliament tape, he must have said to himself, as he usually does: “It’s bingo”, confirms a fellow magistrate. He deeply loves everything that animates an investigation, he loves, as he says, to see a fly get caught in the spider’s web he has woven. » Even if another reproaches him for sometimes « cast a really wide net ».
An ocean of fraud and corruption
Sheriff, him? This is not the image offered by this amiable man, often smiling, who speaks in a soft voice and readily wields irony. At the bottom of his gaze, however, we distinguish a kind of sadness reflecting one of these flaws from which we never really heal. Linked, perhaps, to the damning observation of a society increasingly won over by corruption where, if we are not careful, criminal organizations will definitely take over. He, in any case, already describes his country – and many others – as « corrupt » and openly worries about the future of the democratic system.
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