{"id":24173,"date":"2022-12-11T11:17:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T16:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=24173"},"modified":"2022-12-11T11:17:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T16:17:02","slug":"four-suspects-charged-in-probe-into-european-parliament-bribery-by-gulf-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/12\/11\/four-suspects-charged-in-probe-into-european-parliament-bribery-by-gulf-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Four suspects charged in probe into European Parliament bribery by Gulf state"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Four people have been charged in an investigation into suspected bribery at the European Parliament by a Gulf state – reportedly Qatar.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Greek MEP and European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili was among those previously arrested in the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors suspect the Gulf state tried to influence parliament decisions with donations of money or gifts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Local media have reported that the accused country is Qatar, which the Qatari government has denied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Watchdogs and opposition MEPs have said it could be one of the biggest corruption scandals the European Parliament has ever seen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms Kaili, one of 14 elected vice presidents, has been suspended from the parliament’s Socialists and Democrats Group and expelled from the Greek centre-left Pasok party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cash worth about \u20ac600,000 ($632,000; \u00a3515,000) was seized by Belgian police in 16 searches in Brussels on Friday. Computers and mobile phones were also taken in order to examine their contents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A total of six people were detained for questioning, two of whom have been released.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Four individuals have been arrested by the Brussels investigating judge who is leading the investigation,” the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“They are charged with participation in a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption. Two persons have been released by the investigating judge.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The prosecutor said investigators had suspected that a Gulf state had been influencing economic and political decisions of the parliament for several months, especially by targeting aides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Local media has named the Gulf state under suspicion as Qatar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Qatari government spokesperson told AFP: “We are not aware of any details of an investigation. Any claims of misconduct by the State of Qatar are gravely misinformed.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The country “operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations”, he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A spokesperson for the European Parliament told Reuters that it would not comment on an ongoing investigation, but would work together with the local authorities if needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ms Kaili’s responsibilities as a vice president include the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She has been a defender of Qatar in the past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a\u00a0speech last month about human rights during the Fifa World Cup in Qatar<\/a>, she called the country a “frontrunner in labour rights”, for abolishing kafala, a legal framework used in several Gulf states which human rights organisations compare to modern slavery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“The World Cup in Qatar is proof, actually, of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historical transformation of a country with reforms that inspired the Arab world,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She accused some MEPs of bullying and discriminating against Qatar, adding: “They accuse everyone that talks to them or engages of corruption.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Qatar has previously been accused of corruption,\u00a0including in its bid to host the 2022 football World Cup<\/a>. The country denied the allegations and was cleared of corruption by Fifa.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four people have been charged in an investigation into suspected bribery at the European Parliament by a Gulf state – reportedly Qatar. Greek MEP and European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili was among those previously […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[800,3686,5514,1649],"class_list":{"0":"post-24173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-bribery","10":"tag-brussels","11":"tag-european-parliament","12":"tag-qatar","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24175,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24173\/revisions\/24175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}