SUBSCRIBERS EXCLUSIVE
The gigantic corruption plot involves diplomats and secret services of that African country. And to Italian deputies.
It is claimed that up to 60 members of the European Parliament are already in the crosshairs for the most serious scandal in its history, which is not limited to the corrupting action of Qatar.
The investigations of the Belgian services with the collaboration of five European secret services have lifted the veils that covered other cases. Until now the most serious involves the government of Morocco in another story of bribery in which a group of Italians also linked to the so-called Qatargate scandal appears compromised.
The newspaper The Republic followed the example of the Belgian The evening with the case of Qatar and this Thursday he published an investigation of what, he explains, is not just a plot of corrupters and corrupted but “a true story of espionage.”
Its protagonist would be the DGED, the secret service of Morocco, with a devastating infiltration of the institutions of the European Unionin particular the Strasbourg-based Parliament, with the complicity of a group of Italian parliamentarians and notables who would have pocketed millions in exchange for favoring the foreign policy of the Rabat monarchy on territorial issues and the large movements of migrants that matter at the European level.
The Italians are also fully committed to Qatari maneuvers within the European Parliament.
But in the specific case of Morocco, the Eurosocialist group appears compromised, through three Italians who led the dance of corruption.
the italian connection
Two are MEPs, Antonio Panzeri, who has already finished his mandate, and Andrea Cozzolino. Francesco Giorgi, a Parliament official and above all a partner of the Greek Eva Kaili, one of the vice-presidents of the same body, who has been arrested in Brussels for Qatargate, is added.
The European secret services, notes The Republic, they have reconstructed colloquia, dinners and meetings of high officials of the services of Rabat, the Moroccan capital, with the Italian parliamentarians. They were dealt with by the high intelligence official Belharace Mohammed.
In dealing with the Italians, a special intermediary appears, the Warsaw-based Moroccan diplomat Aberrahim Atmoun.
“It is the demonstration that it was a full-fledged machination of the State,” he comments. The Republic. According to VSSE analysis, the Belgian secret service, Panzeri, Cozzolino and Giorgi were “undoubtedly” collaborators with Moroccan intelligence.
Apparently the role of the Moroccan diplomat in Warsaw, who had a lot of input in Brussels, was central. “Everyone ultimately took orders from him.”
But the most important ring on the chain It was Mansour Tassine, the director general of the DGED, the Moroccan secret service. The three Italian characters have traveled to Morocco several times since 2019 to interview him.
A Moroccan intelligence officer was in charge of booking the Casablanca-Rome tickets.
Niccoló Figá Talamanca, from the Non-Governmental Organization “There is no peace without justice”, was part of the Italian network, which reportedly received consistent fines and that he would also have met the Moroccan diplomat Abderrahim Atmaoun.
According to the Belgian investigation, Francesco Giorgi functioned as an agent of the socialist MEP Panzeri, but it was the other European legislator, Andrea Cozzolino and Antonio Panzeri himself, who managed the agreements regarding the arguments in which they had to act to consent to “Moroccan interference ”.
The rules and system of Qatar and Morocco were the same with the analogous objectives of serving the needs of the respective governments. The Doha and Rabat regimes naturally functioned completely independently in accordance with their diplomatic interests.
The difference is that in the case of Qatar it was the government itself that directly intervened, while the Moroccans used a senior diplomatic official but it was the secret services that were in charge of managing the corrupt.
The Moroccans, according to the Belgian investigation, did not use complicated means. The cash of corruption was transferred directly through the intermediation of the Warsaw diplomat Abderrahim Atmaoun.
The distribution of bribes
The large bribes from corruption were distributed between the Italian gang and the members of the network that extended within Parliament and other European institutions.
Up to now, it is not known how many millions of euros are in the “moroccogate” treasure, nor is it known precisely how many are involved. But the investigations continue and the results will show how far it has been damaged the prestige of one of the central institutions of the European Union.
It will possibly take years before it is possible to clearly elucidate how many political decisions of the European Parliament that have been approved were poisoned by Moroccan interference or in which cases the just decisions were overturned by the action of the Italian corruption network.
Both the case of Qatar and that of Morocco have caused enormous damage to the European Union of 27 countries and not only of image, to the point of becoming a geopolitical issue that forces us to investigate whether there are other cases that have not yet been discovered.
There is talk of Bahrain and Iran that seek to influence parliamentary decisions, but also of the interference of powerful interests that intervene by “lobbying” to guide decisions to their benefit and that feel more motivated by the climate of corruption suffered by the European institutions. .
Rome, correspondent
CB