After Qatar’s influence networks in Brussels, the instruction is interested in those of Morocco. And particularly to a man: Mohamed B., an agent of the DGED, already identified by Paris in another case, but never found.
by Jean-Pierre Stroobants (Brussels, Bureau European)
Over the revelations about “Qatargate” and the survey of Belgian justice in this case of corruption and money laundering involving members of the European Parliament, a new certainty emerges: it is now necessary to talk about A “Moroccogate”, as the elements which leak from the investigation led by the Brussels judge Michel Claise designate the Cherifian kingdom as one of the other key players in this file.
“A saga as serious by its magnitude as dismaying by the fact that it could take place as long, apparently without everyone’s knowledge,” said a MEP Friday, December 16. If he knew some of the actors concerned -of which five are currently indicted and three imprisoned -the elected official also assured that he had never heard of the slightest suspicion which would have run in the spans of the institutions of Strasbourg or Brussels.
A man, the former Italian socialist MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, is at the crossroads of the double investigation on Qatar and Morocco. And the NGO Fight Impunity, which it co -founded, was an essential cog in the system used by the two countries. A Belgian investigator who confided in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica presents it as “a real danger for democratic balance”.
According to the investigation, the NGO installed in the heart of Brussels would have received money from Qatar, by the intermediary in particular of the Minister of Labor of the Emirate, Ali Ben Samikh al-Marri. He went to Brussels several times, anxious to correct the image of his country where, according to estimates that are difficult to confirm, 6,500 workers would have died on the sites of the World Cup of football between 2011 and 2020.
“a secret pact”
According to investigators, Fight Impunity and his leader, Mr. Panzeri, also received money from Morocco, through a diplomat, Abderrahim Atmoun, current ambassador to Poland. The Italian MEP and Mr. Atmoun co-chaired the Mixed Morocco-European Union Commission (EU) and were photographed together on meetings in Brussels and Rabat. According to Belgian media Knack and in the evening, it was through Mr. Atmoun that Mr. Panzeri would have formed, in 2019, “a secret pact” with the Directorate General of Studies and Documentation (DGED), the external intelligence service of Morocco.
older and more confidential documents of the Moroccan mission to the EU, disseminated by a computer hacker in 2014 and in 2015, do not allow us to certify that Mr. Panzeri was paid by the secret services of Rabat or that ‘He was one of their agents. But they throw disorder: described as “weight ally” potential, “close friend” of Morocco, likely to “thwart the growing activism of our opponents within Parliament”, Mr. Panzeri is presented as the one who will be able to defend the principle of Morocco’s sovereignty on Western Sahara. Delivered in 2013, the Charles Tannock report, a British curator, was then to detail the violation, by Morocco, of human rights in this region.
You have 59.83% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.