Italian union leader sacked from ITUC after bribery scandal

An Italian union leader was sacked from the International Trade Union Confederation ITUC after he revealed he had taken money from the main suspect in the Qatargate scandal that has shaken the European parliament.

Following the results of an investigation into allegations against him, Luca Visentini was removed from his position as ITUC general secretary on Saturday. The trade union body said that Luca Visentini no longer had the confidence of the general council as ITUC general secretary.

Visentini was elected ITUC general secretary last November, but was suspended less than a month later after the cash for influence scandal was revealed by Belgian prosecutors. He was arrested on the first day of raids by Belgian police, but was later released without charge.

In a statement released in December, Visentini said that he had taken a donation for a sum less than €50,000 from Fight Impunity, a Brussels NGO founded by the chief suspect in the bribery scandal, former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri.

Visentini said that the donation was intended to reimburse some of the costs of running his campaign to become the ITUC general secretary, and was not in any way connected to a corruption attempt or influencing my position on Qatar. A month after this statement, Panzeri struck a plea bargain with prosecutors, promising to give information about the corruption network, which is said to involve cash payments from Qatar and Morocco to influence decisions in the European Parliament.

The ITUC, which has 332 member organisations in 163 countries, said that a special commission created to look into the allegations had found no evidence of donations from either Qatar or Morocco influencing the ITUC's policies or programmes. The trade union umbrella group said it would elect a new secretary as soon as practicable. Visentini was General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation ETUC until November last year, which would have brought him into regular contact with European lawmakers. When the scandal came to an end, the ETUC said there was no reason to believe there was any connection with it.

Visentini has denied all of the allegations of wrongdoing and was not immediately available for comment.