One of the detainees implicates the MEP in charge of relations with Morocco in the bribery plot

BRUSELAS, 15 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Francesco Giorgi, partner of the former vice president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili and arrested in the operation against corruption for bribes paid by Qatar, has implicated this Thursday in a statement to the Police the MEP Andrea Cozzolino, head of the European Parliament delegation for relations with the Maghreb, including Morocco.

According to the newspaper 'Le Soir', Giorgi, Cozzolino's parliamentary assistant, has acknowledged his role in the organization used by Qatar to bribe MEPs and assistants to the European Parliament to gain political and economic weight in the EU, and has assured that he managed the payments, indicating that both Cozzolino and Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella benefited from the scheme through former Italian parliamentarian Pier Antonio Panzeri.

Documents to which the Belgian newspaper has had access would show contacts between Panzeri, Cozzolino and Giorgi with Moroccan intelligence and the Moroccan ambassador in Poland, Abderrahim Atmun.

As part of the operation, the Belgian Police found more than 1.5 million euros in cash during searches of the homes of Kaili and Panzeri. It was the arrest of the father of the Greek socialist last Friday in a Brussels hotel with a suitcase full of "several hundred thousand euros" in cash that served to demonstrate the "flagrant crime" that allowed the authorities to arrest the then vice president, who was removed from her post on Tuesday in a vote by the European Parliament.

The court of first instance in Brussels extended this Wednesday the preventive detention decreed on several of those detained in the plot. In Kaili's case, she will also remain in prison at least until she appears in court next Thursday, December 22.