Panzeri, Kaili, Giorgi. Their families. And then Cozzolino, Talamanca, Tarabella. Names that keep bouncing around in the news which, investigation papers in hand, are likely to increase. Let’s see who the protagonists are and what role they played in what has been renamed “Qatargate” and could become the most serious case of corruption ever in the European institutions.
Antonio Panzeri
Born in 1955, originally from Riviera d’Adda, Antonio Panzeri is considered one of the main suspects: his detention in prison for at least a month has been confirmed. Former MEP of Pd and Article Uno, he arrived in Brussels for the first time in 2004, where he remained until 2019. The same year in which he founded Fight Impunity, which he leads as director. In the European Parliament, Panzeri dealt with relations with the Maghreb within the foreign affairs commission. During the search of his home, a bag with half a million dollars was found.
Maria Colleoni and Silvia Panzeri
In Italy, in Calusco d’Adda, where the investigation has spread, Panzeri’s wife, Maria Colleoni, 67, and his daughter Silvia, 38, were arrested with a European warrant, on charges of complicity in association for crime, corruption and money laundering. House arrest was ordered for them, considered “aware of the activity of their husband and father and accused of having participated in the transport of gifts”. While awaiting the hearings of 19 and 20 December, in which the Brescia Court of Appeal will decide on their extradition, for the moment both women deny.
Francesco Giorgi
Francesco Giorgi, 35, is Panzeri’s former assistant and current assistant to Pd MEP Andrea Cozzolino (unrelated to the investigation). Originally from Abbiategrasso and a graduate in Political Science from the Milan State University, he was in charge of EU relations with the Maghreb countries. Detention in prison was confirmed for him too: he confessed to the Belgian investigators that he had been part of an organization used by Morocco and Qatar to influence the decision-making processes of the EU. He then tried to protect her partner, Eva Kaili, a former vice president of the European Parliament and mother of their 22-month-old daughter, by demanding that she be released from prison.
Eva Kaili
The decision on Eva Kaili’s position is postponed to December 22nd. She is forty-four years old, she is a Greek socialist exponent. She was born as a television journalist and entered politics with Pasok in 2004 in Thessaloniki, entering parliament only in 2007. Since 2014 she has been in the European Parliament, where she has always followed relations with the Middle East. In recent months, Qatar has been at the center of her speeches, including that of November 21 in which she defined it as “a country at the forefront of workers’ rights”. Sacks of banknotes were found at her house, but Kaili declared herself innocent: “I will not become Iphigenia”, that is, she will not end up like the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who is sacrificed in the Greek myth. Her party, the Pasok, expelled her and she too was dismissed from the position of vice-president of the European Parliament.
Kiali’s father
If several bags of money were found inside Kaili’s apartment, just as many were crammed into a suitcase that Eva’s father tried to take away from his daughter’s home. The judicial police arrested him.
Part of the cash found by the police at Antonio Panzeri’s house and in that of Eva Kaili
(ansa)
Andrew Cozzolino
Born in 1962, Andrea Cozzolino, married with three children, is a historic exponent of the Neapolitan left. He began his political career in the Fgci, and has sat in the European Parliament since 2009, elected with the Democratic Party. He is a member of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and of the Foreign Affairs Commission, as well as of the Maghreb delegations and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean. Yesterday he decided to suspend himself “to protect myself, my morality, my political integrity”. In the interrogation in which Giorgi confessed, the 35-year-old answered the magistrate’s question: “Who took money from Panzeri?”. «It was always Panzeri who managed these contacts. I suspected Tarabella, Cozzolino.’
Niccolò Figà Talamanca
The secretary general of the NGO No Peace Without Justice – founded by Emma Bonino thirty years ago – was arrested in Brussels in the investigation into the alleged attempt at corruption by Qatar, but may instead be released from prison, remaining under electronic surveillance . He allegedly worked as a Qatari lobbyist to promote the emirate’s image and progress in human rights.
Marc Tarabella
Belgian socialist MEP of Italian origin, Marc Tarabella, 59, is vice president of the EU Parliament delegation for relations with the Arabian Peninsula. He was against assigning the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, and then changed his position. Last week his home was searched, a fact that forced the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to go to Tarabella’s home, because the Belgian constitution provides that an elected official can only be searched in the presence of the president of the Chamber of Deputies. ‘belonging. He too suspended himself.
