«Also for Lara Comi (Forza Italia) money from Qatar»- Corriere.it

The flood of confessions in Brussels by the repentant Antonio Panzeri aggravates the position in Qatargate of the MEPs Andrea Cozzolino, Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella, introducing suspicions, all to be clarified, about two other characters who are included among those who, in the projects of the organization, should have been the target of cash funding from the Persian Gulf: the former general secretary of the Italian CGIL Susanna Camusso and the current Forza Italia MEP Lara Comi. Furthermore, for the first time, Panzeri declares that 250,000 euros each were allocated to Cozzolino, Kaili and Comi to help them in the 2019 electoral campaign.

While in Brussels the lawyers of Tarabella they asked the investigating judge Michel Claise to abstain from the investigation for alleged irregular behavior
and Kaili’s defense continues to protest the reserved treatment in prison of the former vice president of the European Parliament arrested with others on December 9, in Belgium the newspaper Le Soir and the weekly Knak and, in Italy, The Republic, publish large excerpts from the minutes filled by Panzeri on 12 and 13 February, after the repentance that guaranteed 5 years in prison, of which just one in prison or under house arrest, to the former euro deputy of Article a strategist of the pro Qatar maneuvers and Morocco, to which he now also adds Mauritania, to condition the parliament’s policy in favor of the three states.

The federal prosecutor, who supports Claise, Thursday he also said yes to house arrest for Francesco Giorgi, former assistant of Panzeri, his partner in maneuvers and current assistant to Cozzolino. Besides Panzeri, they remain in a cell in Belgium only the «hardcore» Eva Kaili
and the Italian-Belgian Tarabella, and in Italy, but under house arrest, Cozzolino. All three plead innocent.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SCANDAL THAT SHAKES EUROPE

Qatar main “shareholder”

In all, Panzeri reveals, from the three states with Giorgi he would have collected around 2.6 million euros from 2018 to 2022, 2.2 from Qatar alone, which is the main financier of the plots of the former Lombard trade unionist in the shadow of his NGO Fight impunity. Panzeri, according to reports Le Soirdeclares that the agreement with Qatar dates back to 2018 with the aim of improving the image of the country, which had, and has, many problems in terms of human rights and which 4 years later would have hosted the World Cup. It was Ali bin Samikh Al Marri, then president of the Human Rights Committee and currently powerful labor minister, who invited him and his assistant-partner to Qatar. The two will split the revenue 50/50. «Francesco Giorgi and I have agreed on a lobbying job. We have decided to use one million euros in 2018 and 2019 and 250,000 euros per capita a year afterwards, from 2020 to 2024». The money, however, seems to arrive through a Turkish company, not all of it, but only 250 thousand euros to the Equality company created in Italy and then closed by Panzeri’s accountant Monica Bellini, who is under house arrest. For Panzeri, who already envisioned not returning to the European Parliament in 2019, lobbying represented the future. For this reason «it was necessary to bet on MPs who would certainly have been elected. I had given two names to the Qataris: Andrea Cozzolino and Lara Comi. And Francesco Giorgi spoke of his partner Eva Kaili” who “needed money for their campaign” and would have attended a meeting to be held in Doha between March and April 2019. “I am sure that at the end of this meeting , the Qataris have decided to make three 250,000 euros each available for electoral campaigns». Comi’s lawyer, the lawyer Giampiero Biancolella, denies the financing and the meeting.

Panzeri, on the other hand, he says, is always second Le Soir, that one million and 250 thousand euros in cash arrived at Giorgi’s house: «There were also 250 thousand for me and Francesco Giorgi as part of this agreement. Francesco Giorgi distributed this money to everyone, including me. He gave them to Eva (Kaili), Andrea (Cozzolino) ». Regarding Laura Comi, he doesn’t know if he ever received any money, but he tells another story, namely that it was she who called him «in April or May 2019» to ask him «if I could collect a bag from his apartment in Brussels». A few days later, Comi was arrested in Milan in the soup kitchen investigation.

Panzeri declares that at that point he went to get the bag with the then assistant of Comi, Giuseppe Meroni. Inside the estimate there were “60-70,000 euros”, which, however, he did not count. “I took everything, I decided to throw the money in the trash.” He will no longer have contact with Comi who will not be re-elected and will return to the European Parliament only after Silvio Berlusconi resigns with the election in September 2022 in the Italian Senate. Comi’s lawyer, Giampiero Biancolella, denies that his client has received funding.

Qatar and the trade unions

Qatar wanted to win the favor of international unions for the problems it had, and has, with the rights of workers involved in the construction of stadiums. In this area appears the name of Susanna Camusso who was a candidate in 2018 for the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, a position to which Luca Visentini will rise in 2022, initially involved in Qatargate and immediately released from prison for 50,000 euros received from Panzeri and partly used for the nomination campaign. Panzeri claims that Qatar had given him 600,000 euros to help Camusso but that, in the end, her assistant said she needed “only” 50,000 euros. He would then have shared 50,000 euros with Giorgi and kept the remaining 500,000 for himself, which is most of the 600,000 found at his home after his arrest on 9 December.

Camusso, to the newspaper Le Soirshe claimed to have met Panzeri in 2018 who introduced her to “the representative of an NGO who, according to him, was involved in the human rights sector in Qatar (…) During the meeting, I was not asked to support the Qatari government in any way, and we didn’t talk about money at all. We only talked about the need to promote trade unions in Qatar».

Kaili at the World Cup

Eva Kaili is also indicated by Panzeri for having supported the interests of Qatar during the opening ceremony of the World Cup, in which she participated by invitation in the country. On that occasion he would have asked the FIFA president Gianni Infantino to intervene on the French president Emmanuel Macron who was against granting the exemption, under discussion in the European Parliament, for citizens of Qatar from the visa to enter EU countries. “I don’t know if he did,” she specifies. Among the reasons why the prosecution wants the Greek parliamentarian to remain in prison, there is also the interception of a conversation in which she allegedly asks a visiting relative to retrieve a mobile phone and USB sticks which are allegedly at her house.

The Cozzolino knot

Panzeri, as mentioned, he also speaks of 250 thousand euros destined for Andrea Cozzolino, suspended from the Democratic Party,
in the records for the alleged activity in favor of Morocco. «Cozzolino is always looking for financial resources», «he always wants more money» reads the minutes published by Le Soir. «Atmoun (Ambassador of Rabat in Warsaw, involved in the investigation, ed) called me, because Cozzolino was annoying him with the money. He asked me if I could advance him 10,000 euros for Cozzolino. I did it”. Cozzolino and his lawyers have always denied any payment. Confirmation of the allegations already presented by the Brussels Public Prosecutor has arrived which, in order to obtain from Parliament the removal of Parliament’s immunity for Tarabella, he wrote that he would receive between 120 and 140 thousand euros from Panzeri. Like the others, he too should have collected 250,000 euros by the end of the term.

Mauritania

Giorgi had said he had rented an apartment at the Mauritanian embassy for 1,500 euros a month plus 300 for expenses. It was a way of giving the appearance of legality to a passage of money to lobby for the African state. Another 25,000 euros went to Panzeri who, however, now specifies that between 2019 and 2021 they received a total of 100,000 euros each.