CORRUPTION?

4 Charged in Qatar-Linked Bribery Scandal Rocking European Parliament

Sources said one of the four arrested was Eva Kaili, a Greek MEP and parliamentary vice president.

Four people have been charged with money laundering, corruption, and participating in a criminal organization by Belgian prosecutors probing claims that a Gulf nation—reportedly Qatar—bribed European Union officials. The charges were announced two days after Belgian police raided 16 sites, seizing computers, cell phones, and a suitcase containing the equivalent of $633,000. Those arrested had not been named by Sunday, but sources informed multiple outlets, including The New York Times and Politico, that one of the four detained was Eva Kaili, a Greek MEP and one of the European Parliament’s 14 vice presidents. By Sunday, Kaili had been expelled from her center-left PASOK party and suspended from “all powers, duties and tasks” in parliament, as well as from its interior alliance of Socialists and Democrats, according to the BBC. Doha rejected any allegations of illicit conduct, calling them “baseless and gravely misinformed.”