[Salon] Morocco-Qatargate

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

Morocco-Qatargate

Summary: as a key defendant agrees to cooperate fully with Belgium prosecutors, the full extent to which the EU parliament was allegedly corrupted by Qatar and Morocco is set to be revealed.

It must be somewhat galling to the Qatari authorities that the affair that HEC Paris law professor Alberto Alemanno has described as “the largest and most damaging political scandal” in EU parliamentary history has garnered the title Qatargate when it seems that at least one other country, Morocco, was equally engaged in buying influence with the parliament’s Human Rights subcommittee.

The scandal broke on 9 December just as the World Cup was moving towards its thrilling climax in Qatar.  In that regard the timing could not have been much worse for the Qataris who saw the football championship as a useful stepping stone to gaining more influence in Europe. In a sweeping raid in three countries five individuals including a then vice-president of the parliament and a former Italian MEP who had previously headed up the HR subcommittee were arrested. €1.5 million in cash was seized along with computers and mobile phones.

On 17 January, the ex-MEP Antonio Panzeri cut a deal with prosecutors in Belgium. As reported by Politico:

According to a press release from the Belgian prosecutor, Panzeri will inform investigators of key details in the ongoing probe into whether foreign countries, including Qatar, illegally influenced the Parliament’s work. Panzeri will hand over information on financial arrangements, the countries involved, who benefited and who was involved.

The Qataris have denied any wrongdoing while claiming that the UAE was behind the affair. But Doha’s hopes that that line would prevail and the scandal would somehow simply fade away will have received a jolt with the news that Panzini is set to sing like the proverbial canary. He has been described as “the mastermind” behind efforts to use the committee to whitewash Qatar’s human rights image which was under much scrutiny for the abuse of the migrant workers who built the World Cup infrastructure.

It is expected Panzini will give chapter and verse not just on what the Qataris were up to but on what Morocco was engaged in. And here the story has all the qualities of a spy thriller, one that features a shadowy Moroccan agent Mohamed Belahrech, codename M118. The spy allegedly linked Panzini to the Moroccan secret service, DGED.

Abderrahim Atmoun, left of picture, with Antonio Panzeri, right of picture [photo credit: social media]

The Belgian authorities are seeking to extradite Panzini’s wife and daughter as part of their investigation. The family, it would appear, was on the receiving end of gifts bestowed on them by Abderrahim Atmoun the Moroccan ambassador to Poland who had a close working relationship with Panzini over several years. The two shared the presidency of a joint EU-Morocco parliamentary committee. As described by Politico: “It’s now suspected that Atmoun was taking orders from Belahrech…. It’s under Belahrech’s watch that Panzeri reportedly sealed his association with Morocco’s DGED after failing to get reelected to the Parliament in 2019.”

If it is the case that Panzini had a longstanding arrangement with the Moroccans than it is likely that Qatar, in its alleged bid to influence how the EU managed human rights abuse issues was simply following down a well-trodden path, one that had been forged by Rabat and its agent M118.

How this all plays out as the case proceeds through the courts remains to be seen. The real damage may not ultimately fall on the Qataris or Morocco, though the latter also has deeply annoyed France through its use of Pegasus malware to spy on, among others, President Macron. As for Qatar, it is a well-known and almost too easily accepted fact that all the Gulf states splash about an abundance of cash to influence all manner of institutions including universities, think tanks, the media and politicians. So it may be  that the EU parliament in the end sustains the most significant reputational damage.

For years, there have been calls for an independent ethics mechanism to investigate parliamentary wrongdoing. Indeed when Ursula von der Leyen took office in 2019 as EU Commission president she pledged to do precisely that. It is yet to happen. And even though the EU parliament is held in low esteem by most voters, precisely because of the levels of corruption that Qatargate so amply illustrates, HEC Paris’ Alemanno thinks it unlikely that anything but tinkering around the margins is going to occur. He says that “unless we set up an independent mechanism that is capable of monitoring, investigating and sanctioning misbehaviour we are not going to be able to change the political culture,” one that enables states like Qatar and Morocco, as well as many others, seemingly to infiltrate and corrupt the European Parliament with impunity.

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