“Thanks to the initiative of the deputy Andrea Orlando, the investigation called Qatargate, which also involved the MEP Andrea Cozzolino, has arrived in Parliament.
We based his defense on three grounds: one on the merits, because there are no facts directly attributable to him as the accusation is based on a late, contradictory and unverified accusation of a defendant—which does not even provide certainty as to the place and time in which the corruption occurred—thanks to which the defendant himself secured the plea bargain;
a procedural one, since much of the preliminary investigation was carried out without guarantees for the accused, which made the contrast between Italian and Belgian legislation strident and effectively prevented, also due to the rigidity of the regulatory framework on the European arrest warrant, an adequate examination by the Italian judiciary of compliance with procedural guarantees and fundamental rights.
Finally, a political motive: the activities carried out by the Belgian secret services and the search of the European Parliament occurred without official information being given to the institutions; the use of pre-trial detention, the wiretapping of MEPs covered by immunity;
the controversial plea bargain of Panzeri, the main defendant, which saved his assets; the fact that Belgian intelligence services continued to investigate even after the case was handed over to the ordinary judiciary, with clear reference to an international context that determined the event but remained unrelated to the investigation;
The resignation of investigating judge Michel Claise in May 2023, due to a conflict of interest (the involvement of his son), revealed the political nature of the judicial investigation.
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This was stated in a note by the lawyers of MEP Andrea Cozzolino, Federico Conte, Dezio Ferraro and Dimitri De Beco.
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