With the burden on the conscience of his daughter and his wife in prison, Antonio Panzeri, interrogated without a lawyer, gives in to the promise of a light sentence and the liberation of the women, repents and makes confessions that seem to reinforce the allegations of the investigators. In this the role of some becomes protagonists of Qatargate, but the figure of the person who, many months later, forced the famous judge Claise to stop the investigation, was downplayed to the extreme.
“Pressure was applied” when he was “vulnerable,” his Belgian defenders protest, accusing investigators of “disloyalty.” He will fill out reports that will also raise suspicions against the former general secretary of the CGIL, Susanna Camusso.
It was a cynical game that police played on December 9th with the former MEP, who had just been arrested in the explosive Qatargate incident, after they found €600,000 in cash suspected of coming from Morocco in his home and Qatar to influence the European Chamber. The news is announced by his lawyers Laurent Kennes and Marc Uyttendaele in a document on file. Panzeri is taken to the police barracks and Francesco Giorgi, his parliamentary assistant until 2019, who is considered an accomplice, and his wife Eva Kaili are also arrested for a dubious, flagrant crime related to his father and arrested with another 600,000 euros, of which he says they were from Panzeri. His daughter Silvia and his wife Maria Colleoni are blocked in Italy.
At 2:30 p.m., lawyer Kennes tells the police that after Silvia found out about her father’s arrest, she asked him to help. They assure him that he can consult him before the interrogation, but it is not known when. After various contacts, Uyttendaele was informed at 10:09 p.m. that he could not speak to us because, as permitted by Belgian law, Panzeri had given up his lawyer. The agents also questioned Kennes’ testimony, claiming that Silvia couldn’t have called him because “she was arrested.”
The lawyer is astonished; he received the woman’s message at 2:14 p.m. The Courier confirmed she was arrested at 2:15 p.m. However, the interrogation began at 3:56 p.m. The report is available. With consummate skill, the police officers gave Panzeri free rein and proudly claimed his union and parliamentary history. However, when he realizes the direction in which he is heading, he justifies his high standard of living (three trips a year for up to 27,000 euros each) with 8,400 euros a month from four pensions and explains that his NGO Fight Impunity receives donations amounting to 1.5 million euros receives 200,000 euros per year. At 5:42 p.m. they allow him to call his daughter. She finds the answering machine because, as the agents know, she was arrested.
The hearing continues with the defendant admitting to illegally receiving 17,000 euros a month as an adviser to Qatari Minister Al Marri, saying Giorgi knew nothing about it, not mentioning Kaili and citing MEP Andrea Cozzolino and others only as acquaintances: “ “I didn’t pay taxes,” but “I didn’t bribe anyone.” At the end, after 5 hours, before entering the cell, the cold shiver of the news of the arrest of his wife and daughter.
In the morning the offer: If he wants the women to come out and receive a six-month prison sentence instead of the 15 years suggested by the investigators, “he has to give two names.” Which? “Completely shocked,” Panzeri accuses himself of corruption, the lawyers write, citing the Italian-Belgian MEPs “Marc Tarabella and Maria Arena.” He stated “120-140,000 euros” for the first amount, but downplayed the figure for the second, even though the name of the arena appears again and again in the investigation: “As far as I know, he received nothing.”
This is followed by an interrogation by the investigating judge Michel Claise, who provides him with a court-appointed lawyer, although Kennes and Uyttendaele (a long-time friend of the judge who was introduced to Freemasonry by Father Guy Uyttendaele) say that they have reported this been appointed. The former trade unionist still excludes Arena and only says about Giorgi that he is Cozzolino’s assistant. Meanwhile, Tarabella’s house is searched, but nothing is found.
Instead, 280,000 euros are found in Arena’s son’s house, albeit 8 months later, with Claise now out of the investigation because it turned out that his son is a partner of the woman’s son. In the application, filed on December 14, the lawyers protest because their client was “not clearly informed of the consequences” of not having a lawyer and that his daughter instructed Kennes: a “trick” to keep him informed about the fate of the women to put pressure on the acts to be invalid and force their release from prison. Nothing will happen, but on January 17, Panzeri signs remorse with the same lawyers: a year in prison, but with the consolation of house arrest, now almost served, and the confiscation of a million. Prosecutors are refusing to extradite the women from Italy who were released on January 26th.
In the following weeks, Panzeri stated that Qatar wanted to finance Susanna Camusso’s election campaign for the presidency of the World Workers’ Union with 600,000 euros in 2018 and meet with Al Marri in Milan. Camusso’s assistant appears to have received only 50,000, the rest would have remained in the penitent’s pocket. The first external review in Belgium, which sent practically no documents to Italy, does not receive the slightest reaction from the Milan public prosecutor’s office: Camusso is being investigated for corruption as a necessary act, the prosecutor Cecilia Vassena and the deputy Fabio De Pasquale called on the investigating judge Angela Minerva to dismiss the lawsuit.