“This scandal in the European Parliament is a commonplace story in Greece. Here, politicians have always filled their pockets. The only difference is that Eva Kaili got caught. » After the incarceration, Sunday, December 11 in Brussels, of the Greek socialist MEP, charged with « corruption »Christos, in his forties, wants to be a philosopher. “We have the politicians we deserve. Nothing changes for us. adds this street musician. Patricia, in her thirties, joins the conversation. Far from taking the scandal shaking the European Parliament lightly, she storms: “Eva Kaili was a model for me, she embodied dynamic values that brought hope. Today, it compromises the country. »
The Demons of Corruption
Since the arrest on Friday evening of Eva Kaili, Greece has been paralyzed. Until Sunday morning, some kept a small hope that the MEP would be heard only as a witness. But when the arrest turned into an arrest and the former TV news presenter was imprisoned, shame and anger took over. Greece, once again, takes center stage with a corruption scandal. A scandal which is grafted on that of telephone tapping of political figures and journalists which has kept the country in suspense since the summer.
Eva Kaili, 44, is one of the figures of Pasok-Kinal, the Greek socialist party. Entering politics at the age of 24, she was the youngest elected to the municipal council of Thessaloniki, then the youngest member of the Greek Parliament in 2009 before becoming a MEP since 2014, then vice-president of the European Parliament since last January. Eva Kaili was part of the delegation aimed at developing EU relations with the Arabian Peninsula. In this context, she had gone to Qatar shortly before the start of the World Cup. “Today, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is concrete proof of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historic transformation of a country whose reforms have inspired the Arab world,” she declared at the rostrum of the European Parliament on 22 November.
The Pasok caught up by the “Kailigate”
The Pasok-Kinal is suddenly panicked. A few months before the legislative elections, while he was gradually recovering from a very long crossing of the desert, the demons of corruption caught up with him. In fact, its history is studded with scandals. As early as the 1990s, several of the party’s tenors, including then Prime Minister Andréas Papandreou, were accused of being involved in vast corruption cases. Starting with the media sector that a sulphurous businessman, Georges Koskotas, wanted to dominate in return for bribes.
Then came the very costly acquisition of military equipment unsuited to the country. And finally the Siemens affair: the German company had showered colossal amounts – still undetermined – on certain party executives in order to win the market for the privatization of the national electricity company, the DEI. The pharmaceutical company Novartis imitated it to flood the Greek market with drugs sold twice as much as elsewhere. But, more far-sighted, she had also approached conservative executives.
While the new management of Pasok had, she believed, succeeded in turning the page on these affairs, she was caught up in what the media called the “Kailigate”. Nikos Androulakis, the president of the party, removed Eva Kaili from its ranks and asked her to give up her seat as MEP. What she flatly refused in order to maintain her parliamentary immunity. Pasok’s number one accused the conservatives in power of having used Eva Kailli as “a Trojan horse” to weaken the positions of Pasok: Eva Kaili had adopted their posture, minimizing the scandal of telephone tapping splashing them.
Athens has announced the freezing of all assets of Eva Kaili in the country and a tax audit against her has been launched. But for many, these decisions come very late.