When agents from La Sûreté de l’Etat, Belgium’s intelligence service, broke into the Brussels home of a former Italian MEP this summer they could scarcely believe what they found: €700,000 (£610,00) in cash, most of it in crisp new €50 notes.
For about a year they had been investigating what has been described as “interference by a foreign power” and were working with counterparts from five other countries. These inquiries led them to Pier Antonio Panzeri, 67, a veteran politician, who, after 15 years in the European Parliament, had in 2019 set up a human rights charity in Brussels, whose board was stuffed with the great and good.
Rather than question Panzeri over the suspicious stash, the spooks decided to leave the money where they
