Hypocrisy and Corruption in European Parliament Exposed

On March 9 of this year, the European Parliament passed a resolution to condemn members and parties that receive funds from foreign entities and parties, with a focus on Russia and on the Italian Lega, among others. The authors of the text are the same factions under investigation today in the Qatargate.

The resolution was based on a report by the Special Commission on Foreign Interference (INGE) which mentioned, among other things, “Cooperation agreements” between the United Russia party and the Lega, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and the Rassemblement National.

In a statement reported by Italian news wires, ID faction leader and Lega member Marco Zanni reprimanded the Parliament for looking in the wrong direction and called for a thorough investigation of the Qatar bribery case. “The attitude we have seen in the past and in the past months has not helped the institutions”, Zanni stated, “with colleagues standing up as champions against foreign interference, even going so far as to fill an official report with allegations that are not always substantiated.”

He continued rather pointedly: “We are in the classic situation where we look at the mote in other people’s eyes and fail to notice the beam on our own: that is why the European Parliament needs to be more humble and less hypocritical on such sensitive issues. (…) what has become untenable in this legislature and will have to change is the attitude of moral superiority of some, and this huge scandal is yet more proof of that.”

Some very prominent figures under investigation in the Qatar case fit Zanni’s description of those claiming “moral superiority”. Brussels prosecutors confirmed the arrest of Niccolò Figà-Talamanca, secretary general of the NGO “There Is No Peace Without Justice” (NPWJ), which shares addresses with the NGO “Fight Impunity,” whose founder Antonio Panzeri was found with €600,000 in cash, and is considered to be one of the masterminds of the bribery scheme. Figà-Talamanca, as the hyphenated name suggests, is a distant descendant of a once-wealthy aristocratic family which enjoyed the title of “Prince of Carini” in Sicily. He is accused of taking money from Qatar to draft favorable reports on its progress in human rights. The involvement of his NGO, if the allegations are proven, is sensational.

NPWJ was founded in 1993 by former Italian Foreign Minister and active politician Emma Bonino, a major partner of George Soros in Italy. Indeed, Bonino herself confessed candidly this year that her election slate, “Più Europa” (More Europe), had been financed by Soros.