A European parliament committee has voted to lift immunity from two MEPs after a request from Belgian authorities to investigate the Qatargate bribery and corruption scandal that has shaken the EU assembly.
MEPs in the European Parliament's legal affairs committee voted unanimously with no abstaining on Tuesday to strip immunity from Belgium s Marc Tarabella and Italy s Andrea Cozzolino.
The European Parliament is expected to approve the view of the committee when it votes on Thursday, triggering the end of immunity from prosecution for both MEPs.
The immunity waiver request came from Belgian authorities, who charged four people with money laundering, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation in relation to alleged payments from Qatar. The four former Italian MEPs, Pier Antonio Panzeri, the serving Greek MEP Eva Kaili, her Italian MEP assistant, Francesco Giorgi, and the head of a Brussels NGO, Niccol Fig Talamanca, have been detained in pre-trial detention.
Like Tarabella and Cozzolino, Panzeri and Kaili were members of the European Parliament's Socialists and Democrats group. Three of the three serving MEPs have been expelled from the bloc.
Kaili automatically lost immunity because of her prosecutors' belief that she had caught her red-handed. Under Belgian law, MEPs do not have immunity from prosecution if they are caught in the act of a crime.
The Brussels flat she shared with her fellow suspect Giorgi was seized by police around €150,000 130,000. On the same day, Kaili's father was stopped trying to leave a Brussels hotel with €750,000 stashed in luggage, although later released without charge.
Panzeri signed a plea deal with prosecutors that they agree to provide evidence in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. According to leaks from the investigation to the Belgian press, Panzeri said he had given €120,000 to Tarabella.
Kaili, Tarabella and Cozzolino have denied all of the charges of wrongdoing. Giorgi's lawyer has refused to comment, while the family of Fig Talamanca have denied all charges of wrongdoing on his behalf.
Last month, the police searched Tarabella's Brussels home, but he has never been charged.
In a letter to the committee, Tarabella said he welcomed the lifting of his immunity, aware of the possible consequences, so he could defend his name. He wrote that he had never received money or gifts in exchange for his political opinions, and that he was judged by public opinion or by some of my colleagues on the basis of press articles or the self-interested confessions of imprisoned people who have apparently changed over time, contrary to my position. Cozzolino, through his lawyer, has declared his total innocence based on a hypothesis of the investigation in which Cozzolino appeared before the legal affairs committee earlier this month to defend himself, but Tarabella waived his right to do so.
Manon Aubry, a French radical left MEP who was responsible for preparing the formal proposals to lift immunity, told Belgium s French public broadcaster RTBF that she hoped that lifting immunity would give light to the scandal because to date we only have the tip of the iceberg. Qatar has denied all of the allegations of wrongdoing.