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STRASBOURG — Eva Kaili, a chief suspect in the Qatargate corruption scandal, faces a return to jail if she carries on talking about the case to the media, according to her legal team.
Gonzalo Boye, one of Kaili’s lawyers, wrote an email — seen by POLITICO — to MEPs on the legal affairs committee on Monday afternoon, saying that the former Parliament vice president is “threatened with being put back in prison if she makes any comment, direct or indirect, about her case to the media.”
In the email, Boye attached a legal order from the investigative judge in charge of the case, Aurélie Dejaiffe, which she sent on December 22 after Kaili appeared in multiple media outlets, including on Belgian TV station RTL, to defend herself.
Kaili is one of the main suspects in the Qatargate scandal and faces preliminary charges of corruption, money laundering and partaking in a criminal organization, the judge says in her letter, adding that there is “a condition of prohibition of contact with the press for anything that is related to the present investigation, which is … in progress and should continue in a serene climate.”
On Tuesday, MEPs will vote on a proposal to lift Kaili’s immunity in a separate case, related to the alleged misuse of her parliamentary budget, according to Parliament President Roberta Metsola.
According to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Kaili is accused of fraudulently spending between €120,000 and €150,000 of public money, and if found guilty she could get between 5 and 15 years in prison. Kaili’s attempt to get the case thrown out at the General Court of the European Union failed last month.
The call to avoid the media comes on top of five other conditions that Kaili has had to respect since being freed from jail in April last year, including that she has to avoid any contact with other suspects in the case, except for “members of her close family (her companion Francesco Giorgi, and his parents).”
Giorgi is also facing preliminary charges of corruption, money laundering, and partaking in a criminal organization, and initially cooperated with the police. But his lawyer, Pierre Monville, now claims his client’s statements were made under duress.
The Qatargate inquiry has been challenged before. Kaili and other suspects forced an internal judicial investigation by arguing that there were errors in the conduct of the Belgian authorities throughout the case.
An important part of their lawyers’ strategy rests on proving that Pier Antonio Panzeri, the ringleader of the alleged corruption network, lied to police and thus broke the terms of a deal he struck with the Belgian prosecutor’s office. Under the deal, struck in January 2023, Panzeri admitted his guilt and vowed to tell the truth to investigators in exchange for a shorter prison sentence.
Giorgi’s lawyer Monville also sent a letter to MEPs, defense lawyers and the Belgian prosecutor’s office which includes covert recordings of a police investigator involved in the case allegedly saying he knows Panzeri is lying. This, Monville writes, should be used as part of the investigation into the conduct of the Belgian authorities.
The recording, which was obtained by Giorgi without police knowledge after they raided his house in April 2023, was leaked to the media on Monday.
A spokesperson for the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement Monday that the work of the investigation consists of verifying the veracity of Panzeri’s statements and that the conclusions from the probe into the Belgian authorities will be taken into account.
Through her lawyers, Kaili has consistently denied any wrongdoing in a scheme in which police say Panzeri and others accepted money from Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for pushing their interests in the European Parliament.
Monville, on behalf of Giorgi, declined to comment, as did Panzeri’s legal team. Contacted through her lawyers, Kaili was not immediately available for comment.
