THE Eva Kaili she was being pressured to plead guilty in order to be released from prison, her lawyer reported to SKAI and to our Morning show Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, who even appeared to “photograph” her former advocate Andre Rizopoulos, without however naming him.

At the same time, for the recent publication by Politico, according to which the former vice-president of the European Parliament is being investigated in connection with another fraud regarding four former assistants of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2020, Mr. Dimitrakopoulos commented that “an ordinary administrative matter has been magnified now that Qatargate is collapsing.”

“Caili was under pressure to plead guilty to be released from prison”

“It is an undeniable fact, and I can tell you after 4.5 months that I have been by Eva Kaili’s side from the first moment, that from the first day Eva Kaili was under pressure. By whom I cannot tell you…. But I can tell you, without reservation, that lawyers of Ms. Kaili’s environment were under pressure to transfer to Ms. Kaili that ‘if you sign and accept that you were taking bribes from Qatar, in 48 hours you will be with your child’. Mrs. Kaili does not accept this… Lawyers told Eva Kaili that ‘the climate in the Brussels courthouse is heavy, if you don’t confess that you have received kickbacks from Qatar, you will sit there for 10 years’. And in fact I can tell you that these pressures from Ms. Kaili’s environmental lawyers continued until 3-4 days before her release from prison. I told her: ‘if you have committed crimes in relation to Qatar, you will confess so that you too can be out free and next to your daughter’, when the answer is that ‘I have never received, not only from Qatar, from any country, from any natural or legal person, not a single euro during the exercise of my MEP duties, I cannot admit something I did not commit’, I told her that ‘together we will fight the battle, because it would be unethical for me as a lawyer to suggest to you to admit acts which have never been carried out by you'”.

You should know, continued Mr. Dimitrakopoulos, that in this fight I was alone with Ms. Kaili, and then when he entered (in the case the other advocate) Sven Marie had the same opinion as me.

The lawyer commented that Ms. Kaili was released under restrictive conditions and now material is being collected with which this flimsy indictment against her will collapse. And in fact the investigator himself, Michel Clez, said, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos stated, “that I find it difficult to document the bribery, just as I find it difficult to document the participation in the criminal organization and it remains to investigate only the part of the money that was found in her house, that based on the evidence fingerprints were not found”.

The money found

According to Mr. Dimitrakopoulos, the amount of money with which her father was found in order to substantiate the crime of bribery should be proven to come from Qatar. A small amount was found on Ms. Kaili out of the total found, money was found on five co-accused. And one euro is not justified, it is not right, but for this money none of the co-accused, nor Pancheri, has assigned the slightest responsibility to Ms. Kaili. “If there was evidence against her they wouldn’t pressure her to confess, when you have evidence you don’t pressure a person to confess his guilt.”

“Ordinary administrative matter inflated now that Qatargate is collapsing”

Furthermore, commenting on the Politico article, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos commented that now that the accusations against Eva Kaili regarding the main issue, that she took bribes from Qatar, are collapsing, when the supposed remittances of millions to the Panamanian banks collapse, with confirmations from both the banks and the Panamanian state, that she has never received a single euro from Panama, nor are there any accounts of her family, suddenly we see that a common theme in MEPs is swelling. In other words, he explained, overtime and partners’ fees are approved by the MEP, and all funds are controlled by the competent authorities, and if there are formal accounting deviations, the matter is settled administratively. “Something that is happening to all the MEPs now, especially for Mrs. Kaili, Mrs. Spyrakis and two other Greek MEPs, is getting bigger,” said the lawyer.