Qatargate is in the news again this week. At the request of the Belgian judiciary, the European Parliament will this Monday afternoon initiate the procedure to lift the parliamentary immunity of two MPs, Belgian Marc Tarabella and Italian Andrea Cozzolino.
Both are located near Pier Antonio Panzeri. The former MEP is suspected of having set up a corruption network in favor of Qatar and Morocco. On Tuesday he will be informed of the extension or non-extension of his preventive detention by one month.
A scathing testimony sheds light on this issue of Pier Antonio Panzeri’s role in this scandal. This is the testimony of a woman our teams have been able to meet. Her name is Ana Gomes. She is Portuguese and knows the European Parliament well, having been elected there for 15 years. And she exercised her mandate at exactly the same time as a certain Pier Antonio Panzeri, who, like him, was a socialist.
The fact that he comes from the same political family does not prevent him from openly denouncing his behavior.
Installed on the terrace of a seafront bar in Cascais, a seaside resort in a suburb of Lisbon, Ana Gomes reacts immediately as soon as the word “Qatargate” is pronounced: “I said it to myself immediately, and I said it here, two days after when the scandal broke, I said on Portuguese television that when it comes to Mr Panzeri, it’s not just Qatar, it’s Morocco. It will come to Morocco, that’s for sure.”
According to Ana Gomes, Morocco, like Qatar, went through Pier Antonio Panzeri to influence European politics. From 2012 to 2013 she recalls an increasingly structured pro-Moroccan lobby in the European Parliament. Two men would have been present at the maneuver, both socialists: a Frenchman, Gilles Pargneaux, whom she describes as vain for presenting himself as an adviser to the king of Morocco; and Pier Antonio Panzeri, in their opinion, smarter and smarter.