44-year-old European Parliament vice president, Eva Kaili has been was suspended from her duties after being caught up in an investigation into influence peddling at the EU assembly allegedly involving officials from Qatar.
According to official reports, the Greek MEP had her powers as a vice president of the European Parliament suspended over a corruption probe implicating World Cup hosts Qatar.
A spokesperson told newsmen that European Parliament President Roberta Metsola “has decided to suspend with immediate effect all powers, duties and tasks that were delegated to Eva Kaili in her capacity as Vice-President of the European Parliament”.
Recall that European politicians had earlier called on Kaili to resign after she was arrested in a corruption probe implicating a wealthy Gulf state. Kaili was arrested by Belgian police, along with four others, in connection with a suspected influence-peddling investigation. The five were detained after a series of raids in Brussels which prosecutors said turned up €600,000 ($630,000) in cash. Computers and mobile phones were also seized, reports said.
Belgian prosecutors suspect the country — identified by several media outlets as World Cup hosts Qatar — has influenced the decisions of the European Parliament through cash payments or gifts to lawmakers in the EU assembly.
Harping on the development, German Green Party MEP Anton Hofreiter told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that if the accusations prove to be true, Kaili “must not only withdraw from the [vice] presidency of the EU Parliament but also resign her mandate.”
Also, Jens Geier, the chair of the German Social Democratic Party’s 16-member delegation in the European Parliament, called on Kaili to resign immediately, adding: “It can’t go on like this for another day.”
Similarly, the president of the Greek socialists (PASOK), Nikos Androulakis, announced on Twitter that Kaili had been expelled from the party.
More so, the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in the European Parliament said Kaili had been suspended from their grouping.
In a swift move, S&D president Iratxe Garcia Perez tweeted that they would call for Kaili to be replaced as a parliamentary vice president.
On their part, anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International said the allegations showed that MEPs needed to be held to higher standards. Group director Michiel van Hulten said “This is not an isolated incident. While this may be the most egregious case of alleged corruption the European Parliament has seen in many years, it is not an isolated incident.”
Van Hulten said the parliament had “become a law until itself” by allowing a culture of impunity to develop over several decades, with a combination of lax financial rules and controls and a complete lack of ethics oversight.Â
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