Money and relations with deputies. Now the companion of Kaili- Corriere.it speaks

BRUSSELS –
There is a time jump in the corruption investigation that is making the European Parliament tremble, a gap of no small importance in which the Belgian magistrates, who already had all the clues to carry out the blitz in their hands, decided to remain under the water and to postpone the already scheduled arrests for almost two months. A decision that can only be explained by new, crucial and urgent elements that forced plans to be changed at the last minute. How can the developments of the long interrogation of Francesco GiorgiVice President Eva Kaili’s partner arrested with her.

A million and a half

The most glamorous couple in European politics was surprised with almost one million euros in cash which, added to the 600,000 found in Antonio Panzeri, raise the poisoned fruit of corruption from Qatar to one and a half million. Friday Giorgi must have felt the world collapse on him when the judicial police put the handcuffs on him. They kept an eye on him and intercepted him, and it cannot be excluded that it was precisely his words on the phone with his partner’s father that allowed the investigators to enter the beautiful house of the former Greek journalist and find 150,000 euros in bribes. What made it possible to overcome the barrier of parliamentary immunity that protected the residence was the flagrance in which his father was caught rushing out of the luxurious Sofitel in Brussels where he had been staying with his wife for a few days. When they blocked it, the agents discovered 600,000 euros in banknotes in the dragging trolley. Knocking on their daughter’s house and on Giorgi’s, they found the other money. He was unaware of the money found at his home, Kaili’s lawyer says in a surprising statement that portends the blame game.

Interrogation

Giorgi’s interrogation on Saturday lasted for about ten hours with the suspect answering the investigating judge Michel Claise who in the afternoon was forced to postpone the hearings of the other arrested (today they will appear at the hearing) to the next day to give free vent to the river in flood. What emerges from the investigation that uncovered the largest round of bribes in the history of the European institution that the magistrates are seeking confirmation of the round of bribes and sumptuous gifts that from Qatar, and partly also from Morocco, allegedly arrived at the ong Fight impunity, founded in 2019 by Panzeri and on whose honorary council sat, before resigning indignantly, Nobel Prize winners, former prime ministers and former commissioners. A ring of corruption that also reaches Lombardy, where, at the request of Eurojust, the deputy Fabio De Pasquale, who heads the international affairs department of the Milan prosecutor’s office, acquired accounts and searched homes and offices to reconstruct the assets of the Panzeri family and Giorgi (at his home in Abbiategrasso another 20 euros jumped out).

The plot

In the search decree, however, an initial date was indicated, 19 October, in which the Belgian magistrates had ready the request for arrests which was then kept in focus until 7 December when, supplemented by other documentation, it arrived in Milan within two days from the Brussels blitz. This suggests that the basis of accusation laid down two months ago but were further enriched until the eve of the arrests. Along the muffled and astonished corridors of the Strasbourg parliament building, where voices chase each other wildly, there are those who tell of the assistant of a parliamentarian who would have started the investigation after her contract in a staff had not been renewed contiguous to the one where Giorgi works. The latter is currently a collaborator of the Pd Andrea Cozzolino (not involved in the investigation)but most of all former collaborator of Panzeri
which, directly or through him, he would have corrupted Eva Kaili
. This intertwining, which if proven would be perverse, is another of the central themes of the exhausting interrogation in which the 35-year-old sailing instructor also spoke of the money passed by the Panzeri to other members who work in the European Parliament, as the prosecution defines them with a specification that suggests new developments.