The European Commission finally investigated and confirmed that one of its former Commissioners, the Greek Dimitris Avramopoulos, was a member of the honorary board of the NGO Fight Impunity, whose chairman, former Italian MP Pier Antonio Panzeri, is considered the prime suspect in the Qatargate scandal about bribing MPs and other EU officials in exchange for allegedly favoring the policies of countries such as Qatar and Morocco.
The European executive’s approval, which was given following a positive opinion from the commission’s independent ethics committee, came in February 2021, well before Qatargate exploded. And yet, the Belgian judiciary began to investigate the Panzeri environment, concerned about the possibility of interference from a third country. However, this Community license reveals one of the weaknesses of the control systems of the European institutions exposed by this scandal: for example, official documents show that the NGO was known not to have been registered in the NGO Commission’s Transparency Protocol on the time when Avramopoulos, Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs from 2014 to 2020, was given the green light to participate.
The decision, which ultimately confirms that the Greek works for the NGO or that he receives a salary for his work “for a year”, says that the former Commissioner “has informed the Commission that he intends to register as soon as he resumes his physical presence duties in Brussels after the Covid-19 pandemic. While this point is emphasized in the final decision, there has never been any verification that Fight Impunity has fulfilled its promise to register for the Registry, a requirement that, while not yet mandatory – something the EU hopes to turn into the aftermath of the scandal – does have a guarantee of transparency. Indeed, there are currently 12,411 registered organizations carrying out lobbying activities in Brussels, but the Panzeri association is not yet registered.
Moreover, everything indicates that the European institutions did not even know that, as the newspaper Le Soir revealed last week, the NGO had never been accountable to the Belgian authorities: according to the newspaper that presented Qatargate, set up alongside the act of combating impunity as a non-profit association registered with a notary on September 25, 2019, there is no trace of its accounts in the Belgian registers, although national law requires them to be filed annually.
The Commission’s decision on Avramopoulos came after the NGO had been operating for almost a year and a half. Last Sunday, the 11th, Avramopoulos assured on Twitter that after learning of the Panzeri investigation, he “immediately” resigned from Fight Impunity’s honorary board, along with two other prominent members: the former High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Federica Mogherini and former French Prime Minister Bernardo Cazeneuve. The latter assured last week on the Franceinfo channel that he did not even know Panzeri. “I have never seen him in my life. I took on this volunteer role two or three years ago, but I never heard from him again. I have requested that my name be removed,” he explained.
For his part, Avramopoulos also assured that he is no longer associated with the NGO. “After a year I stopped serving on the board. It had no executive or administrative function,” the Greek assured the media in his country, recalling that he had asked the Commission for permission to join the NGO.
Despite this, neither his name nor those of other honorary members, from Avramopoulos or Mogherini to 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege or former Italian EU Commissioner Emma Bonino, have been removed from the Fight Impunity website. On the contrary, the members of the NGO ‘work team’ no longer appear in it. One of them, Francesco Giorgi, who is also a parliamentary assistant, is also accused of corruption, money laundering and criminal organization together with Panzeri and the Greek Eva Kaili, Giorgi’s partner and until Monday Vice-President of the European Parliament.
Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
