The cash-for-influence scandal in the European parliament is sending shockwaves through the political establishment in Rome, with rightwingers gleefully declaring that the alleged crooks are all on the left.
Eva Kaili, a Greek vice-president of the parliament, has been arrested amid allegations that she took cash from Qatar to soften the EU stance on the Gulf state’s human rights record. In Italy all eyes are on three others charged with corruption, starting with the former left-wing MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri.
His human rights charity, Fight Impunity, is suspected of being a distribution point for foreign cash used to persuade MEPs to ignore abuses. Investigators suspect he took money from Qatar and Morocco, it is understood. They found €600,000 in cash at his Brussels home and another €17,000 at his Italian home near Bergamo. A former member of Italy’s centre-left Democratic Party, Panzeri, 67, had signed up with an offshoot group, Article One, and had been a member of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European parliament.
Belgian investigators also issued European arrest warrants for Panzeri’s wife, Maria Colleoni, 68, and her daughter Silvia, 38, who removed pictures from her Instagram account of her holidays in Miami, Canada and Qatar as the scandal broke.
Commenting on the €17,000 in cash found, a family lawyer said: “It is a sum which I do not believe is considerable for a well-off person.”
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Panzeri and Kaili have denied wrongdoing while Qatar has said no bribes were paid. In Italy, where right-wing parties have struggled after the reputational damage caused by the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s perennial run-ins with the law, rightwingers were in a festive mood.
“Today corruption is on the left. Whoever sells themselves is vermin,” said Fabio Rampelli, the deputy speaker in parliament’s lower house and a senior member of the prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.
“The left, which has often pointed the finger, is embarrassed,” Ignazio La Russa, the Brothers of Italy’s senate speaker, said. “If this had happened to one of our MEPs they would have demanded the dissolution of the League,” said Igor Lezzi, a senior official with the League, which is part of Meloni’s ruling coalition. The fallout for the left was made worse as it emerged that Emma Bonino — a left-wing doyenne, and Federica Mogherini, the former Democratic Party foreign minister, were on the board of Panzeri’s charity.
Kaili’s Italian partner, Francesco Giorgi, 35, who was arrested, is a former assistant to Panzeri.
Starved of political scandals of late, the Italian media devoted plenty of coverage to the scandal while left-wing commentators acknowledged that the right had no monopoly on ethical lapses. “Morality is a relevant theme in this country and it hurts more when the left is involved,” Roberto Speranza, the head of Article One, told La Stampa.
