As reported by the Belgian newspaper LeSoir and the RTBF television network, Marie Arena maintained close relations with the alleged mastermind of the case, Antonio Pancheri, and was mentioned several times as a “suspect”, but she had never been called in for questioning.
After 14 months of investigations into the corruption scandal at European Parliament (Qatargate)the Belgian judiciary decided to call for questioning for the first time today, one of the main suspects in the case – the Belgian MEP of the Socialists, Marie Arena.
As reported by the Belgian newspaper LeSoir and the television network RTBF, Marie Arena maintained close relations with the alleged mastermind of the case, Antonio Pantzeri and she was mentioned several times as a “suspect”, though he had never before been called in for questioning. The Belgian MEP of the Socialists she was questioned this morning at the Central Office for Combating Corruption (OCRC), without any threat to her freedom. The issuance of an arrest warrant for Marie Arena is ruled out, since the Belgian authorities have not asked the European Parliament to waive her parliamentary immunity. However, according to Soir, the failure to waive M. Arenas’ immunity does not prevent possible prosecutionif that is what the investigating judge Aurelie Delzef, who has replaced Michel Clez, after he resigned from the case for serious reasons of conflict of interest, decided in June 2023.
As he reminds Soir, the name of the former president of the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, has been on the case file since the investigation began, but even earlier, from July 2022, when the State Security, for the first time, shared in writing with the federal prosecutor’s office its suspicions of possible acts of interference and corruption. “Marie Arena occupies a particularly important position in the achievement of Qatar’s objectives,” the intelligence services wrote in a confidential memo. “He benefits from Pancheri’s advice and influencewhile the latter uses Arena’s position as chairman of the Human Rights Subcommittee of the European Parliament to exert influence”.
Equally interesting are the hundreds of phone calls exchanged between December 2021 and September 2022 between Pancheri and the Arena. The MEP herself describes her relationship with Pancheri as a “professional friendship” and denies any other kind of relationship, however some defendants or witnesses at their hearings have claimed otherwise.
During a conversation between Panzeri and his former assistant Francesco Giorgi, abducted by the Security Service in May 2022, Pancheri, who had just returned from Doha, explains to Giorgi that there he was given a Rolex watch which he gave to a woman who participated in this trip. As stated in the case file, “this woman was not named by Pancheri”, however, “given the context of the conversation it could be Marie Arena”.
Finally, it is recalled that in the period 2017-2019, the then president of the EP subcommittee on Human Rights, Antonio Panzeri, had started a special agreement with Qatar. Marie Arena succeeded him as chairman of the committee when Pancheri left his position. Shortly after the outbreak of the Qatargate scandal, Marie Arena resigned as president of this subcommittee. To this day, Marie Arena denies having committed anything illegal and has maintained the confidence of the Socialist party in the European Parliament, unlike Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella and Italian Andrea Coccolino who are accused of this case, along with Eva Kaili.
Source :Skai
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