Eva Kaili talks about Gatargate and the charges brought against her in an interview she gave to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “If I had mentioned important names I would have returned to my daughter, but I would be lying,” said the former vice-president of the European Parliament.

Also, Mrs. Kaili underlined: “I feel stronger, I appreciate every moment with my daughter, I can’t stop looking at her.”

Regarding her stay in prison, immediately after the arrest, she said: “I suffered terribly from the cold, because they took my coat” and “I was worried about my daughter, because I was not allowed to call a lawyer and not even to talk to the family my”.

“When they arrested Francesco and impounded his car, I thought it was going to be a traffic accident. Then they sent me the news that Pancheri had also been arrested, I panicked. I knew that in his office, which was a room on the second floor of the house, where I never go, there was a Pancheri suitcase and I found a pile of money. I didn’t understand what had happened, but I wanted to remove this money from the house, to give it back to Pancheri, who I thought was also its owner. I did not think at all to use my parliamentary immunity, and this proves that I did not know what this money actually represented”, said Eva Kaili.

He adds that “I knew that Pancheri received donations” and that “there are testimonies about his activities in the European Parliament, for the people who were related to them”, but “I myself am not one of them”.

“After over a year of investigations, my activities and accounts have been audited and are crystal clear. My fingerprints are not on the banknotes found. With my lawyers I will prove my innocence”, the Greek MEP tells Corriere della Sera.

He replies that “now everything may look suspicious, but before it wasn’t like that”, because “Pantseri was Giorgi’s employer and hired him when he was a student of only twenty” and “he worked for Pancheri as a personal translator and assistant and continued to help him even after the end of his term as MEP. Francesco felt a deep sense of gratitude and moral obligation to Pancheri.”