Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The Milan prosecutor’s office and the Fiamme Gialle are on the trail of the Doha money from London and Turkey
Who got the over three hundred thousand euros that left England and Turkey and arrived in Italy in the coffers of Equality created by Antonio Panzeri? The investigations by the Guardia di Finanza of Milan follow the traces left by this substantial and suspicious flow of money and the hypothesis of a system created to recycle and transfer the bribes collected by the former MEP arrested in Belgium to their homeland. On Friday, the deputy prosecutor of Milan, Fabio De Pasquale, opened an independent file for money laundering by registering two of the last members of Equality in the register of suspects.
Short but intense life that of the company set up in Opera (Milan) by the accountant of the Panzeri family Monica Bellini, who is under house arrest after the arrest requested by the Brussels judiciary in the investigation into the bribes received by Antonio Panzeri and his “partner” Francesco Giorgi to bribe members of the European assembly in the shadow of the NGO Fight impunity in favor of Qatar, Morocco, and Mauritania.
Partners are Bellini (5%), the father and brother of Giorgi, Luciano (70%), and Stefano (20%), Equality Consultancy was born in December 2018 to close in June 2021 after a running change of the shareholder structure with the exit of the Giorgis and the entry of Manfred Forte and Dario Vittorio Scola. The last two are the people investigated by prosecutor De Paquale, while Bellini is under house arrest in her home in Opera as part of the Brussels investigation.
Among other things, the corporate purpose of Equality envisages “developing networks between different subjects, NGOs, business organizations and counterparts in third countries”. The first balance sheet closes in 2019 with 240 thousand euros of revenues and 102 thousand euros of profit, that of the following year with 75 thousand euros of revenues and a loss of 51 thousand euros: therefore a total of just over 300 thousand euros that would have been invoiced, according to the investigations, to three British companies and one Turkish company. The money laundering investigation will work on this and will be opened by Milan’s assistant prosecutor Fabio De Pasquale.
The latter has received information from the men of the judicial police section of the Fiamme Gialle with whom he will deepen the Italian implications of the Brussels investigation which led on December 9 to the arrest, among others, of Panzeri, Giorgi, and the partner of the second, the former vice president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili.
It was Giorgi who disclosed the function of Equality to Belgian judge Michel Claise when he recorded that, instead of continuing to receive cash from Qatar, Panzeri “thought it was preferable to create a structure” through which to “manage the flow of cash legally”. He turned to Bellini who, Claise notes, thus “played an important role in the repatriation of the cash”. Equality “provided services to a company based in England” which, Giorgi claims, had been referred to by a certain “Palestinian” and referred to a certain “Hakan”. Giorgi, the only one to speak English, kept in touch between Hakan, Bellini, Panzeri, and his daughter Silvia, who “prepared the documents as a lawyer”. After deciding to collaborate with the Belgian judiciary, Panzeri admitted having received 2.6 million from Qatar, Morocco, and Mauritania with Giorgi.
Meanwhile, the Italian-Belgian MEP Marc Tarabella remains in prison, arrested in Brussels in the investigation into Qatargate. The Council Chamber in Brussels has decided to extend his detention by another month. “We will continue to fight to get an innocent man out of prison because, let’s remember, Marc Tarabella is innocent and has never received money or gifts in exchange for his opinion,” the MEP’s lawyers declare. While Eva Kaili, the former vice president of the EU Parliament, will remain in prison for another two months.
Read the original story at: milano.corriere.it