Former MEP Panzeri, the main defendant for ‘Qatargate’, will be placed under house arrest

6 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

Former Socialist MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, the main defendant in Belgium for the plot of alleged bribes paid by Qatar, will be released from prison and will be placed under house arrest, the Brussels Prosecutor’s Office has reported.

His lawyer, Laurent Kennes, has assured this Thursday that Panzeri has given relevant “information” in the framework of the investigation. “There is a relative collaboration and the room has accepted an alternative modality to preventive detention,” he stressed in an interview with the RTBF chain.

In this sense, he has reacted positively to the measure, although he has recalled that “the electronic bracelet is a deprivation of liberty equivalent to prison, except that he is locked up at home 24 hours a day.”

By virtue of an agreement reached by his lawyers and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in exchange for reducing his sentence, Panzeri promised to provide details about the ‘modus operandi’, the countries involved and the names of those who succumbed to corruption.

Panzeri, who agreed in January with the Belgian Justice on these conditions, which make him “repentant”, was charged on December 10, accused of being the ringleader of a criminal organization and participating in money laundering activities and active public corruption and passive.

In the framework of the same investigation that, according to the Belgian media, points to the payment of bribes by Qatar and Morocco to gain weight in the EU through MEPs, three other people have been charged so far, including the Greek socialist Eva Kaili, vice president of the European Parliament dismissed after the scandal, and her partner and parliamentary assistant Francesco Giorgi.