Qatargate, another Belgium ploy for Panzeri: account freeze request

The Qatargate investigation continues. The Belgian Judiciary has asked Italy to ‘freeze’ two of the seven current accounts in which, in recent days, the Guardia di Finanza coordinated by the Public Ministry of Milan had acquired activities. It is a story by Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former European deputy arrested in the context of the alleged corruption scandal, and his daughter Silvia, who is under house arrest. There is a problem related to the competence of the promoter who must carry out the ‘freeze’. The request, collected by Eurojust, must in fact be analyzed by an investigating judge, who must assess what was requested by Brussels, as happened for the preventive seizure of the house in Cervinia (Aosta Public Prosecutor’s Office) owned by a company that would belong to Nicolò Figà-Talamanca, considered a key figure in the investigation of alleged corruption. Apparently, to deal with the foreign request on current accounts, “it could be a procurator more Lombard than Piedmontese”, but the evaluation is not yet clear. What seems clear is that the ‘suspicious’ money was found in two of the seven Italian current accounts that Judge Michel Claise asked to investigate and attributable to Panzeri (two), his daughter Silvia (one), trade unionist Luca Visentini (three) and to former Panzeri collaborator Francesco Giorgio (one).

However, the European Commission announced that it never had “any contractual relationship” nor paid “any funding” to Fight Impunity, the Asbl (the Belgian equivalent of our non-profit organization) founded by Panzer. That’s what the main spokesman for the EU executive, Eric Mamer, explained during the press briefing in Brussels. Instead, with «No Peace Without Justice, the Commission has been working for several years, mainly before this mandate». “We have suspended payments” to this NGO and it was “suspended” from the Commission’s transparency register last “December 13”, clarifies the clarification.