Bengaluru: The Congress’ Karnataka unit has given a call for state-wide bandh on March 9 to oppose “loot” and “corruption” in the state, a party release said on Sunday.
State President D.K. Shivakumar termed as “disgusting” the corruption practiced by BJP in the state. “The 40 percent commission has destroyed the life of all sections of the society… Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai government is by the corrupt, for the corruption and to the corruption,” he claimed.
The achievements of the BJP government are taking 40 percent commission in every tender, 40 percent commission in all school funds, 30 percent commission in funds released to religious mutts, and bribe for every posting and transfer, Shivakumar alleged.
There were scandals in recruitment of sub-inspectors of police, associate professors, assistant engineers, junior engineers and a recent addition is the rampant corruption that came to light in the Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Ltd (KSDL), he said.
Shivakumar said that to avoid inconvenience to the public, the protest will be staged symbolically between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and education institutions, hospitals, transport and other services are kept out of bandh. “Our demand is that CM Bommai should be sacked or he should resign from his post,” he demanded.
BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s Socialists are warily eyeing their colleagues and assistants, wondering which putative ally might turn out to be a liar as new details emerge in a growing cash-for-favors scandal.
Long-simmering geographic divisions within the group, Parliament’s second largest, are fueling mistrust and discord. Members are at odds over how forcefully to defend their implicated colleagues. Others are nursing grievances over how the group’s leadership handled months of concerns about their lawmaker, Eva Kaili, who’s now detained pending trial.
Publicly, the group has shown remarkable solidarity during the so-called Qatargate scandal, which involves allegations that foreign countries bribed EU lawmakers. Socialists and Democrats (S&D) chief Iratxe García has mustered a unified response, producing an ambitious ethics reform proposal and launching an internal investigation without drawing an open challenge to her leadership. Yet as the Parliament’s center left ponders how to win back the public’s trust ahead of next year’s EU election, the trust among the members themselves is fraying.
“I feel betrayed by these people that are colleagues of our political group,” said Mohammed Chahim, a Dutch S&D MEP. “As far as I am concerned, we are all political victims, and I hope we can get the truth out in the open.”
S&D MEPs are grappling not only with a sense of personal betrayal but also a fear that the links to corruption could squash otherwise promising electoral prospects.
Social democrats were looking forward to running in 2024 on the bread-and-butter issues at the top of minds around the bloc amid persistent inflation, buoyed by Olaf Scholz’s rise in Germany and the Continent-wide popularity of Finland’s Sanna Marin. Now, the group’s appeal to voters’ pocketbooks could be overshadowed by suitcases filled with cash.
“We were completely unaware of what was going on,” said García, vowing that the group’s internal inquiry will figure out what went wrong. “We have to let the people responsible [for the investigation] work.”
The ‘darkest plenary’
Shock, anger and betrayal reverberated through the 145-strong caucus in early December last year when Belgian police began arresting senior S&D figures, chief among them a former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri and Eva Kaili, a rising star from Greece who had barely completed a year as one of Parliament’s 14 vice presidents.
“The Qatargate revelations came as a terrible shock to S&D staff and MEPs,” an S&D spokesperson said. “Many felt betrayed, their trust abused and broken. Anyone who has ever become a victim of criminals will understand it takes time to heal from such an experience.”
When the S&D gathered for a Parliament session in Strasbourg days after the first arrests, few members took it harder than the group’s president, García, who at one point broke down in tears, according to three people present.
“We are all not just political machines, but also human beings,” said German MEP Gabriele Bischoff, an S&D vice chair in her first term. “To adapt to such a crisis, and to deal with it, it’s not easy.”
“I mean, also, you trusted some of these people,” she said.
An Italian court ruled that the daughter of former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri can be extradited to Belgium | European Union
In Strasbourg the group showed zero appetite to watch the judicial process play out, backing a move to remove Kaili from her vice presidency role. (She has, through a lawyer, consistently maintained her innocence.)
The group’s leadership also pressured MEPs who in any way were connected to the issues or people in the scandal to step back from legislative work, even if they faced no charges.
“It was of course the darkest plenary we’ve had,” said Andreas Schieder, an Austrian S&D MEP who holds a top role on the committee charged with battling foreign interference post Qatargate. “But we took the right decisions quickly.”
The S&D hierarchy swiftly suspended Kaili from the group in December and meted out the same treatment to two other MEPs who would later be drawn into the probe.
But now many S&D MEPs are asking themselves how it was possible that a cluster of people exerted such influence across the Socialist group, how Kaili rose so quickly to the vice presidency and how so much allegedly corrupt behavior went apparently unnoticed for years.
Like family
The deep interpersonal connections between those accused and the rest of the group were part of what made it all so searing for the S&D tribe.
Belgian authorities’ initial sweep nabbed not only Panzeri and Kaili but also Kaili’s partner, a longtime parliamentary assistant named Francesco Giorgi, who had spent years working for Panzeri. Suddenly every former Panzeri assistant still in Parliament was under suspicion. Panzeri later struck a plea deal, offering to dish on whom he claims to have bribed in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Maria Arena, who succeeded Panzeri as head of the Parliament’s human rights panel in 2019, also found herself under heavy scrutiny: Her friendship with her predecessor was so close that she’d been spotted as his plus-one at his assistant’s wedding. Alessandra Moretti, another S&D MEP, has also been linked to the probe, according to legal documents seen by POLITICO.
The appearance of Laura Ballarin, García’s Cabinet chief, raising a glass with Giorgi and vacationing on a Mediterranean sailboat with Kaili, offered a tabloid-friendly illustration of just how enmeshed the accused were with the group’s top brass.
“I was the first one to feel shocked, hurt and deeply betrayed when the news came out,” Ballarin told POLITICO. “Yet, evidently, my personal relations did never interfere with my professional role.”
Making matters worse, some three months later, the scandal has largely remained limited to the S&D. Two more of its members have been swallowed up since the initial round of arrests: Italy’s Andrea Cozzolino and Belgium’s Marc Tarabella — a well-liked figure known for handing out Christmas gifts to Parliament staff as part of a St. Nicholas act. Both were excluded, like Kaili, from the S&D group. They maintain their innocence.
Whiter than white
That’s putting pressure on García, who is seen in Brussels as an extension of the power of her close ally, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is one of S&D chief Iratxe García most important allies | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
However, she has not always been able to leverage that alliance in Brussels. A prime example is the backroom deal the political groups made to appoint the Parliament’s new secretary-general, Alessandro Chiocchetti, who hails from the center-right European People’s Party. García emerged mostly empty-handed from the negotiations, with the EPP maneuvering around her and The Left group securing an entirely new directorate general.
Kaili, from a tiny two-person Greek Socialist delegation, would also have never gotten the nod to become vice president in 2022 without García and the Spanish Socialists’ backing.
Yet when it comes to trying to clean house and reclaim the moral high ground, the Socialist chief has brought people together. “She deserves to be trusted to do this correctly,” said René Repasi, a German S&D lawmaker.
In the new year, the S&D successfully pushed through the affable, progressive Luxembourgish Marc Angel to replace Kaili, fending off efforts by other left-leaning and far-right groups to take one of the S&D’s seats in the Parliament’s rule-making bureau. In another move designed to steady the ship, the Socialists in February drafted Udo Bullmann, an experienced German MEP who previously led the S&D group, as a safe pair of hands to replace Arena on the human rights subcommittee.
And in a bid to go on the offensive, the Socialists published a 15-point ethics plan (one-upping the center-right Parliament president’s secret 14-point plan). It requires all S&D MEPs — and their assistants — to disclose their meetings online and pushes for whistleblower protections in the Parliament. Where legally possible, the group pledges to hold its own members to these standards — for example by banning MEPs from paid-for foreign trips — even if the rest of the body doesn’t go as far.
Those results were hard won, group officials recounted. With members from 26 EU countries, the group had to navigate cultural and geographic divisions on how to handle corruption, exposing north-south fault lines.
“To do an internal inquiry was not supported in the beginning by all, but we debated it,” said Bischoff, describing daily meetings that stretched all the way to Christmas Eve.
The idea of recruiting outside players to conduct an internal investigation was also controversial, she added. Yet in the end, the group announced in mid-January that former MEP Richard Corbett and Silvina Bacigalupo, a law professor and board member of Transparency International Spain, would lead a group-backed inquiry, which has now begun.
The moves appear to have staved off a challenge to García’s leadership, and so far, attacks from the Socialists’ main rival, the EPP, have been limited. But S&D MEPs say there’s still an air of unease, with some concerned the cleanup hasn’t gone deep enough — while others itch to defend the accused.
Some party activists quietly question if the response was too fast and furious.
Arena’s political future is in doubt, for example, even though she’s faced no criminal charges. Following mounting pressure about her ties to Panzeri, culminating with a POLITICO report on her undeclared travel to Qatar, Arena formally resigned from the human rights subcommittee. The group is not defending her, even as some activists mourn the downfall of someone they see as a sincere champion for human rights causes.
Vocal advocacy for Kaili has also fueled controversy: Italian S&D MEPs drew groans from colleagues when they hawked around a letter about the treatment of Kaili and her daughter, which only garnered 10 signatures.
“I do not believe it was necessary,” García said of the letter. “[If] I worry about the situation in jails, it has to be for everyone, not for a specific MEP.”
The letter also did nothing to warm relations between the S&D’s Spanish and Italian delegations, which have been frosty since before the scandal. The S&D spokesperson in a statement rejected the notion that there are tensions along geographical lines: “There’s no divide between North and South, nor East and West, and there’s no tension between the Italian and Spanish delegations.”
In another camp are MEPs who are looking somewhat suspiciously at their colleagues.
Repasi, the German S&D member, said he is weary of “colleagues that are seemingly lying into your face” — a specific reference to Tarabella, who vocally denied wrongdoing for weeks, only to have allegations surface that he took around €140,000 in bribes from Panzeri, the detained ex-lawmaker.
Repasi added: “It makes you more and more wonder if there is anyone else betting on the fact that he or she might not be caught.”
Jakob Hanke Vela, Karl Mathiesen and Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: Targeting the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after the Supreme Court declined to entertain a plea filed by Manish Sisodia challenging his arrest by the CBI in connection with the 2021-22 Delhi liquor policy case, the BJP alleged on Tuesday that now the AAP has become synonymous with “cut, commission and corruption”.
The BJP will now raise the issue of corruption by AAP across the country and tell the people that AAP leaders have not got any relief in the matter from the Supreme Court.
Addressing the media at the party headquarters here, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Supreme Court did not give any relief to Anna Hazare’s ‘great disciple’ Manish Sisodia in connection with the liquor policy case, which he termed as a ‘text book’ case of corruption.
“These people had claimed to fight corruption before coming to power in Delhi. But after assuming charge of the government, these same people worngfully gave away liquor contracts, reduced the drinking age and made a profit of Rs 100 crore. These people made people drink liquor by promising to open schools,” Prasad said.
Prasad also said that Sisodia and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had claimed that they are the torch-bearers of transparency in the country, but now they have maligned the legacy of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.
Holding Kejriwal directly responsible for the liquor policy case, the BJP leader said: “Can any minister dare to work in the Delhi government without asking Kejriwal? Now even the Punjab government functions only on his directions.”
Launching a scathing attack against AAP, Prasad said that he used to think that ‘cut and commission’ is the legacy of only one party, but today it has to be said that ‘3Cs’, i.e., ‘cut, commission and corruption’ are also synonymous with Kejriwal’s party.
“Sisodia must disclose why he changed 16 phones, why did he destroy evidence,” Prasad said.
The BJP leader also accused Kejriwal of lying repeatedly, adding that Kejriwal’s ministers, who had levelled allegations against the CBI and the Central government, are currently lodged in jail.
New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday said AAP leader Manish Sisodia has been arrested in an “open and shut case of corruption” and that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should also be arrested for his alleged involvement in the excise policy case.
The two leaders are “deeply involved in corruption” and should be dealt with accordingly, Congress leader Ajay Maken said.
Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday in connection with alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy for 2021-22.
“This is an open and shut case of corruption and a big scam has taken place in Delhi, and it should be viewed accordingly,” Maken said.
He said Kejriwal should also be arrested in the case.
“It has now been established in one of the charge sheets and one of the accused liquor barons has said he was made to speak to Kejriwal on Facetime,” he added.
The Kejriwal government had set up a committee to recommend changes in the excise policy but just the opposite of what the panel recommended was done “so that corruption could be done”, Maken charged.
The Congress leader claimed Sisodia and Kejriwal are “deeply involved in corruption” and asserted that they should be dealt with accordingly.
“Those who are sympathising with Manish Sisodia should know that this is a matter of corruption and it should be viewed accordingly,” Maken told PTI.
The AAP, which is projecting the action against Sisodia as “injustice”, should answer as to why changes were made against the recommendations of the committee, he said.
Maken further said, “I would also like to ask the central government not to misuse central agencies even in a genuine case like this and make it seem like political vendetta. They should use them sparingly.”
Some Congress leaders including Abhishek Singhvi and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot have spoken in support of Sisodia and accused the government of misusing agencies against opposition leaders. Singhvi, who is also Sisodia’s lawyer in court, later clarified that his remarks did not represent the Congress’ stand.
The President of the Government defends the diligence of his party by expelling the Socialists involved in the plot
MEAS Madrid
Pedro Sánchez spoke this Monday night for the first time, in his capacity both as President of the Government and as leader of the PSOE, on the ‘Mediator case’ that questions the party when it is being investigated, at the epicenter of the plot for alleged purchase of favors and extortion to businessmen, the former socialist deputy, expelled for the case, Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo. Asked about the investigations in Telecinco, Sánchez assured that he is taking them “very seriously” because he came to power after a motion of censure for the irregularities of ‘Gürtel’, even stressing that if this scourge has fallen on the concerns of the citizens is because of the “clear and forceful” way in which the PSOE, with him at the helm, reacts to illegal conduct.
“We stop corruption, we do not cover it up,” replied the socialist general secretary when pointed out by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who cursed if Sánchez has taken part in Fuentes’ business. “‘Tito Berni’ is going to bring down this government,” Ayuso came to predict, alluding to the family name of the former deputy under investigation. The PP began this Monday to tighten the siege on the PSOE for the ‘Meditor case’ by announcing that it will appear in the case opened in the Canary Islands for the “possible ‘bites’”, according to the censure of the popular campaign spokesman, Borja Semper. His party believes the response of the socialists is insufficient.
Vox went one step further and took advantage of the record of his motion of censure to justify it, too, because “they have turned Congress into a brothel.”
#Sánchez #Mediator #case #stop #corruption
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( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
Bengaluru: Senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah on Friday accused Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai of using the Justice H S Kempanna Commission’s report to give wrong information in the Assembly regarding the Arkavathy Layout denotification.
The Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly said the Chief Minister was acting with an intention to “hide” the corruption charges against the BJP government.
He was reacting to Bommai, who on Thursday in the Assembly, reading out the excerpts from the Justice Kempanna Commission’s report which is not in public, had accused the previous Congress government of “redo” or denotifiation of Arkavathy Layout land.
“When I was not present in the Assembly, Bommai shouted and created an impression that there was a big scam worth Rs 8,000 crore. The Kempanna Commission has said that I did not denotify even one gunta of land. Bommai is speaking plain lies,” Siddaramaiah told reporters here. One gunta is equal to 1,089 square feet.
He noted that Arkavathy Layout was formed in 2003, and before his government came to power, 2,750 acres were notified.
“Later, final notification was done for 1,919.13 acres. This was challenged in High Court and went to the Supreme Court, which fixed some parameters and teams were formed to delete some lands when B S Yediyurappa was the chief minister,” Siddaramaiah added.
The file next went to Jagadish Shettar who subsequently became the Chief Minister, but by then the model code of conduct for the election was in place, so it was sent back, he said.
“When our (Congress) government came, there was a petition in the High Court because of which there was some pressure.”
“As our officers had stated that everything was done as per the Supreme Court’s parameters. I approved it. It was not a redo, but a remodified scheme,” Siddaramaiah further said.
Subsequently as Shettar, who was then Leader of Opposition, and others alleged that there was a scam, he had formed a judicial commission for an inquiry, the Congress leader contended.
Pointing out that in September 2021, the HC constituted another committee under retired Justice K N Keshavanarayana, Siddaramaiah said: “Hearing a PIL that sought for tabling of the Justice Kempanna Commission’s report, the High Court had said it can’t be considered in view of the Keshavanarayana committee that’s functioning. Hence, it was wrong to speak on a report that was not tabled.”
With the ruling BJP accusing him of weakening the Lokayukta by forming the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Siddaramaiah also sought to defend his government’s decision to constitute the new state agency.
“Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and 12 other states have Lokayukta and ACB. Why isn’t the BJP abolishing ACB in these states?” he asked.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion, senior Ukraine opposition politicians and former ministers were brimming with frustration. They’d been imploring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with them — something he’d not done since his landslide election nearly two years before.
They’d also been urging him to boost funding for the country’s armed forces for months, clamoring for Ukraine’s reservists to be called up as America’s warnings of an invasion intensified — an invasion Zelenskyy still thought unlikely. They wanted intensive war-planning, including the drafting and publication of civil defense orders, so people would know what to do when the guns roared.
“Ukraine is trapped with a national leader who does not think strategically,” Lesia Vasylenko, a lawmaker and member of the liberal and pro-European political Holos party, had told me five days before the invasion.
“I think that’s the thing he will be blamed for later. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about refusing to have in your entourage experts who know what questions to ask, and having advisers who can contradict and challenge you, and we may pay a price for that,” she’d fumed.
Of course, Zelenskyy’s missteps — as Vasylenko and many other opposition lawmakers see them — have since been forgiven, but they have not been forgotten. And these missteps form the basis of their worries for post-war Ukraine. They see a pattern that will become even more troubling when the guns fall silent, arguing that the president’s strengths as a lionhearted wartime leader are ill-suited for peacetime.
War hasn’t done anything to temper Zelenskyy’s impatience with governing complexities or with institutions that don’t move as fast as he would like or fall in line fast enough. He prefers the big picture, ignores details and likes to rely on an inner circle of trusted friends.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.
He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.
“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma.
“He thought peace would be easy to establish because all you needed to do was to ‘look into Putin’s eyes’ and talk to him sincerely,” said lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“He became president without any political experience, or any experience in managing state structures. He thought running a state is actually quite simple. You make decisions and they have to be implemented,” Kniazhytskyi told me. And when things went wrong, his reaction was always, it’s “the fault of predecessors, who need to be imprisoned,” Kniazhytskyi said.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now, he floundered as president before Russia invaded | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Yet, Zelenskyy’s transformation from disappointing peacetime leader to, in the hyperbolic words of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, “a new, young and magnificent founding father” of the free world, has been startling.
Even his domestic critics doff their caps to him for his strengths as a superb communicator: His daily addresses to Ukrainians have steadied them, given direction and boosted morale, even when spirits understandably flag. And they acknowledge he likely saved the country by declining U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s offer for “a ride” out of Kyiv.
“He has become a compelling leader,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the upcoming “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” According to Karatnycky, Zelenskyy’s strengths as a communicator match the times. “He’s good at channeling public opinion, but he’s more effective now because the country is much more united and surer about its identity, interests and objectives. He’s still the same guy he was — an actor and performer — but that makes him an ideal war leader because he’s able to embody the public impulse,” he added.
But when normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united, Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.
And that world hasn’t really gone away.
Domestic political criticism is mounting — though little noted by an international media still enraptured by Zelenskyy’s charismatic appeal and enthralled by the simple story of David versus Goliath.
Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada — the country’s parliament — frustration is building, with lawmakers complaining they’re being overlooked by a government that was already impatient of oversight before the war and now shuns it almost entirely. Zelenskyy has only met with top opposition leaders once since Russia invaded — and that was nearly a year ago.
“The routine of ministers being questioned by the Rada has been abandoned,” said opposition lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of the European Solidarity party and former deputy prime minister in the previous government of former President Petro Poroshenko.
“Wartime does call for urgent decisions to be taken quickly, and it calls for shortened procedures. And so that’s kind of understandable,” she said. “But we are seeing decisions being increasingly centralized and concentrated in fewer hands, and this is having an impact on the balance of political power, and [it’s] damaging to the system of governance we are trying to develop and the strengthening of our democratic institutions in line with the criteria laid out by the EU for convergence.”
Klympush-Tsintsadze is worried the recent wave of anti-corruption arrests was more an exercise in smoke and mirrors in the run-up to February’s EU-Ukraine summit — and one that might be used as an opportunity to centralize power even further. “If someone thinks that centralization of power is the answer to our challenges, that someone is wrong,” she added. “I think it is important to watch very closely how anti-corruption cases develop, and whether there will be transparent investigations, and whether the rule of law will be closely observed.”
According to Kniazhytskyi, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Zelenskyy is a populist politician and shares the personality-focused flaws of this breed. However, what cheers the opposition lawmaker is how Ukrainian civil society has bloomed during the war, how local self-government has been strengthened because of wartime volunteering and mutual assistance and how some state bodies have performed — notably, the railways and the energy sector.
It is this — along with a strong sense of national belonging forged by the conflict — that will form the foundation of a strong post-war Ukraine, he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In February 2020, Eva Kaili, the European Parliament’s high-flying vice president, was on stage at the five-star Ritz Carlton hotel in Qatar’s capital Doha, moderating a discussion about social media giants and democracy.
“We see always efforts of political interference among member states, even in Europe,” she said, turning to her co-panelist. Kaili looked down at her notes. “How do you feel in this country and [its] role in the stability of the whole region?” she asked.
“The country that is hosting us today has made a great progress during the last years,” came the laudatory reply as former EU commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos answered.
This snippet of conversation from a two-day conference would have passed unnoticed at the time. But heard today, the praise is laden with irony. Kaili is in jail, swept up in a high-octane corruption scandal gripping the EU establishment in Brussels, in which Qatar — and also Morocco — are accused of paying off EU lawmakers in order to influence Parliament’s work.
The conference did not come out of the blue. Its seeds had been planted some two years prior, when then-Parliament member Pier Antonio Panzeri, the alleged ringleader of the corruption plot, signed a semi-official cooperation deal with an organization linked to the Qatari government. POLITICO has now obtained the document, after first reporting on its existence last month.
The pact, which Panzeri inked as head of Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, connected the EU body to Qatar’s own human rights commission. It pledged “closer cooperation” between the two sides, mentioning annual “projects” and the exchange of “experiences and expertise.” The language laid the groundwork for years of collaboration, including conferences and lawmaker trips to Doha, with Qatar covering business class flights and luxury hotel stays.
Notably, however, the agreement does not officially exist, according to the Parliament. The memo never went through to lawmakers for review — despite Panzeri saying it would — nor did it go through any formal channels of approval.
“The European Parliament has no official knowledge of the document you refer to,” a Parliament press services official told POLITICO.
Yet the document does exist, illustrating how a foreign country was able to establish substantial links to EU lawmakers and a European Parliament committee without ever triggering formal alarm bells in the institution.
“This is problematic,” said Monika Hohlmeier, a senior MEP from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) who leads the budgetary control committee. “It shows that we should be much more aware of what is happening.”
“This is extraordinary,” marveledsomeone with knowledge of how the human rights committee (known as DROI) functions.
Qatar has consistently maintained that it rejects any allegations of undue interference in the EU’s work.
The signing
Panzeri signed the deal on April 26, 2018, during a DROI committee meeting in Brussels with Ali bin Samikh Al Marri, who chaired Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC). The NHRC says on its website that it enjoys “complete independence” from Qatar’s government.
Addressing a handful of MEPs in a largely empty room, Al Marri argued the Qatari government had made “tremendous strides” on human rights reforms, albeit also admitting it was not yet sufficient. He slammed Saudi Arabia and other Gulf neighbors for imposing what he called “collective sanctions” amid a diplomatic stand-off that resulted in “human rights violations.”
At the very end of the hour-long committee meeting, Panzeri made a brief, passing reference to a “consultation and cooperation document that we will sign today and we will provide to the members of the DROI subcommittee.”
But they didn’t receive it.
“It has never happened,” said Petras Auštrevičius, a Lithuanian liberal MEP who led his group’s work on human rights at the time. Two former MEPs with coordination roles on the committee, Barbara Lochbihler and Marie-Christine Vergiat, also said they had no memory of such an agreement.
Auštrevičius added that even the decision to invite Al Marri to address the committee that day had not been signed off by fellow MEPs, in line with normal practice.
“It seems that the Chair [Panzeri] decided to invite [Al Marri] following a recent private visit to Qatar, which I was not aware of,” Auštrevičius said.
Indeed, on the day the deal was signed, Panzeri was freshly back in Brussels after a trip to Qatar with his parliamentary assistant, Francesco Giorgi.
During the trip, Panzeri met the then-Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah Bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, his human rights counterpart Al Marri, and praised Qatar’s labor reforms ahead of the football World Cup, according to a media report Panzeri retweeted.
Al Marri would later become Qatar’s labor minister, as global criticism mounted over Doha’s treatment of the migrant workers building the World Cup stadiums.
Giorgi, Panzeri’s assistant, would later be detained alongside his boss and Kaili in the authorities’ initial sweep of arrests. All three were charged with corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization.
The conference did not come out of the blue. Its seeds had been planted some two years prior, when then-Parliament member Pier Antonio Panzeri, the alleged ringleader of the corruption plot, signed a semi-official cooperation deal with an organization linked to the Qatari government | Photo via European Parliament
Panzeri has now brokered a plea deal with prosecutors, admitting to bribing MEPs in exchange for a reduced sentence. Kaili and Giorgi, who are partners, deny any wrongdoing. Lawyers for Panzeri and Kaili did not respond to a request for comment.
Nearly five years later, Parliament officials are scratching their heads about how such a deal could have been signed. Even the signing itself is shrouded in mystery.
According to the Parliament’s press services, the deal was signed in Panzeri’s office. But a photo of the signing shows an EU Parliament staff member present, as well as the official EU and Qatar flags. And a second person familiar with the committee’s work said the signing took place in one of the Parliament’s official protocol rooms, normally used by foreign delegations.
The text of the deal itself is vague and jargonistic.
“It has been decided to continuethe bilateral activity through a consultation and cooperation understanding between the two parties,” it reads on a single side of A4 paper.
“This understanding,” it adds, “aims at regulating and facilitating the relations between the NHRC and DROI through the promotion of closer cooperation, the exchange of bilateral expertise, information and contacts regarding human rights.”
Panzeri’s ‘delegation’ in Doha
In 2019, one year after “this understanding” was reached, Qatar co-organized its first conference in Doha in partnership with the Parliament, or at least with the Parliament’s logo plastered all over it. The topic: Fighting impunity.
At the conference, Panzeri praised Qatar as a “reference” point for global human rights standards. An article in the Gulf Times quoted Panzeri as saying the conference was a direct outgrowth of his 2019 deal. Later, “fight impunity” would even become the namesake cause of Panzeri’s NGO.
Then came the 2020 conference, held in Doha on February 16 and 17 and apparently co-organized with the European Parliament. The new topic: “Social media, challenges and ways to promote freedoms and protect activists.”
The Parliament press services official denied the event was co-organized, saying “it was not an event of the institution, but we still have to investigate how they could use the logo [of the Parliament].”
The 300 attendees had business class flights paid for by the Qataris, plus accommodation in the Ritz Carlton hotel, and a dinner at the national museum of Qatar to end the conference.
Kaili is in jail, swept up in a high-octane corruption scandal gripping the EU establishment in Brussels, in which Qatar — and also Morocco — are accused of paying off EU lawmakers in order to influence Parliament’s work | Photo via European Parliament
Kaili was far from the only top EU politician there.
As she wrapped up her moderating duties, Kaili thanked Panzeri for “organizing actually this delegation.”
Panzeri — who had left Parliament in 2019 — was sitting in the front row next to his now-detained assistant, Giorgi.
Also present was Socialist and Democrat (S&D) lawmaker Marc Tarabella, who was arrested last week as police expand their probe. Belgian prosecutors suspect Tarabella took up to €140,000 in cash from Panzeri to influence EU work on Qatar.
Tarabella’s lawyer, Maxim Töller, denied Panzeri organized the trip: “It’s not Mr. Panzeri. … Well, he was on the trip.”
Tarabella failed to disclose the subsidized trip until last month, years past Parliament’s deadline. Tarabella made a number of excuses for the late declaration, including that he thought it was no longer possible. More broadly, he has proclaimed his innocence in the corruption probe.
Two other EU lawmakers present at the event — S&D member Alessandra Moretti and EPP member Cristian-Silviu Bușoi — also failed to declare their subsidized attendance until after the corruption probe came to light.
“It was an event sponsored by the European Parliament, so the Parliament was aware of the event and of my participation,” Moretti said. “In the spirit of full transparency, I decided to publish it.” She denied being part of a Panzeri-created delegation.
Bușoi, who led the Parliament’s unofficial “friendship group” with Qatar, said: “The 2020 event was declared later due to a staff error.” He also denied being part of any Panzeri-orchestrated delegation.
After Panzeri left Parliament in 2019, S&D lawmaker Maria Arena replaced him atop the DROI committee. In January, she told POLITICO she had not continued Panzeri’s agreement.
The conferences, however, did continue.
In addition to the 2020 event, Arena later went to Qatar in 2022 on Doha’s dime for an NHRC workshop. She eventually stepped down as committee chair after POLITICO disclosed Arena failed to declare the subsidized trip on time. Arena did not reply to a request for comment for this piece.
And for all the confusion around the deal, one thing is clear: For Qatar, it never ceased to exist.
“The relationship with the European Parliament is of utmost importance to us,” Al Marri wrote in May 2021 to two EU lawmakers, including Arena.
Its evidence? “the Memorandum of Understanding we signed with the Human Rights Subcommittee.”
Elena Giordano, Camille Gijs and Nektaria Stamouli contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Thursday took to Twitter to clarify on its initial pact for hiring Adani Group’s port at Gangavaram in Andhra Pradesh for LPG imports in addition to existing pacts with nearby ports, saying there is no take-or-pay agreement.
The statement, which came in response to TMC’s Mahua Moitra raising a stink of a scam in hiring of the port facility without a tender, contradicted Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd’s earning call presentation that said “MoU signed with IOCL for a take-or-pay contract at Gangavaram Port for building LPG handling facilities.”
Moitra, reacting to the news based on the statement in the presentation, tweeted, “Brazen theft”.
Tagging Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and CVC on Wednesday evening, Moitra said, “No tender. No CVC norms. Moving business from Vizag Port to Gangavaram. Skimming from coal, skimming from gas, now skimming from ‘chula’ in every household. Shame!”.
IOC in an unusual move on Thursday sent out a series of tweets to clarify its position.
“IOC has just signed a non-binding MoU with APSEZL till now,” it said, adding that it floats no tenders for hiring of facilities at ports to import LPG — a commodity that India is short of production.
“There is no take-or-pay liability or any binding agreement, as of now,” it said.
A take-or-pay contract means that the state-owned firm will have to pay for using the terminal’s full 5 lakh tonnes capacity a year even if it ships less than the committed quantity.
IOC currently uses state-run Visakhapatnam or Vizag Port, located adjacent to Gangavaram port, to import some 7-8 lakh tonnes of LPG annually.
APSEZL, the ports unit of the Adani Group, had revealed the plan while announcing the company’s third quarter financial results on February 7.
Moitra’s party is among the opposition parties which have been demanding a probe into allegations a US short seller has levelled against the Adani Group.
Hindenburg Research on January 24 accused the Adani Group of accounting fraud and stock manipulation, allegations that the conglomerate has denied as “malicious”, “baseless” and a “calculated attack on India”.
Listed companies of the Adani Group lost over USD 125 billion in market value in the last three weeks. Stocks of most group firms were up on Thursday.
Replying to Moitra’s tweet, IOC said it imports LPG at various ports, including Kandla, Mundra, Pipavav, Dahej (in Gujarat), Mumbai and Mangalore (in Karnataka) on West Coast and Haldia (in West Bengal), Vizag (in Andhra Pradesh) and Ennore (in Tamil Nadu) on the East.
Two more import terminals are coming up at Kochi in Kerala and Paradip in Odisha. “These will be used in due course of time,” IOC said.
“IOC enters into agreements with various ports on a regular basis to enhance capability to supply LPG across India. For hiring of LPG terminals, OMCs evaluate the infrastructure for suitability for catering to the nearest market at a reasonable cost. No separate tender is invited,” it said.
OMCs are Oil Marketing Companies.
“LPG demand in the country is on a constant increase. There are 31.5 cr connections after the Ujjwala Scheme; up from 14 cr earlier. OMCs are constantly on the lookout for new port facilities which make commercial sense in Logistics,” IOC said.
Providing detailing about the terminal hiring pacts on the east coast, the company said currently there are only two terminals near Vizag — one by South Asia LPG (a joint venture of France’s TotalEnergies and HPCL) and East India Petroleum Limited (a private company).
“SALPG charges Rs 1,050 and EIPL charges Rs 900 as charges with lower capacity vessel unloading capability,” IOC said.
“EIPL facility has no captive connectivity to be used on a continuous basis. IOC has just signed a non-binding MoU with APSEZ till now. APSEL has offered a price of Rs 1,050 for LPG import terminaling charges with facility of unloading of bigger vessels of refrigerated LPG directly,” it added.
The Gangavaram port would allow handling of bigger vessels.
“This gives an additional advantage compared to SALPG & EIPL as bigger vessels can be quickly unloaded. Such an arrangement will save freight & demurrage due to extra time for evacuation. There is no take-or-pay liability or any binding agreement, as of now,” IOC said.
While 0.7 million tonnes per annum of LPG is imported at Vizag port now, the new port is for handling 0.3 million tonnes.
“Vizag will continue to be utilised. Availability of multiple terminals will give operational flexibility, increase competition among terminal operators & an opportunity for competitive rates,” it added.
BJP national president J P Nadda in West Bengal on Sunday
Purbasthali: Dubbing the TMC as a party that stands for Terror, Mafia and Corruption’, BJP national president J P Nadda on Sunday accused it of committing “massive” irregularities in the implementation of the PM Awas Yojana (PMAY) in West Bengal.
Claiming that the state has been brought to a “standstill” under the Trinamool Congress rule, Nadda said the BJP would end the “jungle raj of Mamata Banerjee”.
“As PMAY is being audited in West Bengal, massive irregularities have come up. It has shown that people who have two-three storey buildings received houses under the scheme. This is the situation in West Bengal,” he said.
Nadda also said that West Bengal, despite having a woman chief minister, “tops” the chart in terms of crime against women.
“The TMC stands for Terror, Mafia and Corruption. There is graft everywhere in West Bengal. Whether it is SSC recruitment or any other type of hiring, jobs are up for sale,” the BJP chief added.
