Entering the year 2023, the corruption scandal in the European Parliament continues to ferment.
On January 2, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsoura, tweeted that at the request of the Belgian judiciary, she had initiated an urgent procedure to revoke the immunity of two MEPs. .
This means that more members of the European Parliament will be investigated and even prosecuted in this corruption scandal that has shocked the entire European political arena.
According to Euronews, Belgian prosecutors issued a statement in December last year stating that they have been suspecting that a Gulf country tried to influence the decision of the European Parliament by giving gifts and bribes for more than a year.
After a long investigation, the Belgian police recently carried out at least 20 search operations, including 19 searches of private homes and 1 search of the European Parliament office. They seized hundreds of thousands of euros in cash at three different locations and arrested six people. Two of them were subsequently released, while the other four were charged with corruption, money laundering, and participation in a criminal organization.
To the shock of the outside world, one of the people arrested was Greek MP Eva Kaili, one of the 14 deputy speakers of the European Parliament.
According to the Politico report, as a member of Parliament, Cali originally enjoyed immunity. but Belgian prosecutors seized 150,000 euros in cash in her apartment in Brussels, and her immunity automatically expired.
On December 12 last year, the European Parliament voted to remove Cali’s deputy speaker. Both the Social Democratic Progressive Alliance (S& D),olitical group in the European Parliament to which she belongs, and the Greek political party, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement Party (PASOK), have delisted her, and the Greek government has announced the freezing of all her assets.