Qatargate is once more at the heart of the news this week. At the request of Belgian justice, the European Parliament will launch this Monday followingnoon the procedure for lifting the parliamentary immunity of two MEPs, the Belgian Marc Tarabella and the Italian Andrea Cozzolino.
Both are close to Pier Antonio Panzeri. The former MEP is suspected of having created a network of corruption for the benefit of Qatar and Morocco. Tuesday, he should be informed of the extension or not of one month of his preventive detention.
A damning testimony sheds light on this subject on the role of Pier Antonio Panzeri in this scandal. This is the testimony of a woman, whom our teams were able to meet. Her name is Ana Gomes. She is Portuguese, and she knows the European Parliament well, having been elected there for 15 years. And she exercised her mandate exactly at the same time as a certain Pier Antonio Panzeri, being a socialist, just like him.
Being from the same political family does not prevent him from openly denouncing his behavior.
Installed on the terrace of a bar along the sea, in Cascais, a seaside resort in the suburbs of Lisbon, Ana Gomes reacts immediately as soon as the word “Qatargate” is pronounced: “I said to myself right away, and I said it here two days following the scandal became known, I said on Portuguese television, if it involves Mr. Panzeri, it’s not just Qatar, it’s is Morocco. It will come to Morocco, that’s clear.“
According to Ana Gomes, Morocco, like Qatar, went through Pier Antonio Panzeri to influence European policies. From 2012-2013, she remembers an increasingly structured pro-Moroccan lobby within the European Parliament. At the manoeuvre, there would have been two men, both socialists: a Frenchman, Gilles Pargneaux, whom she describes as vain because he presented himself as an adviser to the King of Morocco; and Pier Antonio Panzeri, according to her, smarter and smarter.
