Who is Eva Kaili, the former VP of the European Parliament suspected of corruption?

She has the face of an angel, yet her name is associated with a corruption case linked to Qatar. Eva Kaili, Greek MEP, appeared on December 22, 2022, before a judge for belonging to a criminal organization, corruption and money laundering. For the time being, her detention has been extended for one month.

On December 9, 2022, the Social Democrat MEP was arrested by Belgian police as part of an investigation into corruption for the benefit of Qatar. Nearly 150,000 euros (nearly 160,000 USD) in cash were reportedly seized while searching her apartment in Brussels.

According to documents consulted by Le Soir and La Repubblica, Eva Kaili's father was arrested at the Sofitel hotel in Brussels with a suitcase full of banknotes, which the young woman asked him to hide.

If her name was probably unknown to you before the "Qatargate" revelations, Eva Kaili is, in fact, a formidable politician. The meteoric rise of her political career is proof of this.

In 1998, Eva Kaili joined the socialist movement PASOK and became a municipal councillor in the city where she was born 20 years earlier, Thessaloniki. She then studied architecture.

Passionate about politics, the young Greek had big ambitions. At 26, she ran for her first legislative elections in the first constituency of Thessaloniki. But she did not win.

After graduating with a degree in architecture, Kaili turned towards a career in journalism. Between 2004 and 2007, Eva Kaili presented the weekend newscasts on the Mega TV channel.

However, she never gave up on her political ambitions. In 2007, she was elected as a member of the Greek Parliament representing PASOK. At only 29, she was the youngest member of her political party. During her mandate, she participated in a special commission for Greeks abroad.

Kaili rose to a new political level in 2014 when she was elected as a member of the European Parliament. After the first term of five years, the MEP was re-elected in 2019.

But her political ascent did not stop there. Ambitious and determined, Eva Kaili ran for the vice-presidency of the European Parliament in January 2022 and was elected in the first round. She thus joined the Bureau of the Parliament, whose role is, among other things, to set the institution's rules, alongside 13 other vice presidents.

Regularly taking positions close to those of the right, Eva Kaili has not been unanimously accepted by her party, PASOK. In 2019, for example, she opposed a social assistance project for low-income families, saying: "Allowances are for lazy people."

During her term as a Member of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili was part of a delegation aimed at developing relations between the European Union and the Arab peninsula. It is in this context that she began to forge ties with Qatar.

On November 22, 2022, at the start of the World Cup, Eva Kaili said: "Today's FIFA World Cup in Qatar is concrete proof of how sports diplomacy can lead to a historical transformation of a country whose reforms have inspired the Arab world."

The MEP had also declared before the hemicycle of the European Parliament: "Qatar is a pioneer in terms of labour rights".

On December 9, 2022, Eva Kaili was arrested in Brussels by the Belgian police and was charged and imprisoned two days later for "corruption" involving gifts and cash payments. In the process, she was expelled from her political party PASOK, suspended by her social-democratic parliamentary group and stripped of her duties as vice-president of the European Parliament.

If Eva Kaili is today the face of this corruption affair, she is not the only one to have been imprisoned. On the day of her arrest, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office also arrested four other suspects in Brussels and two in Italy.

Parliamentary Assistant to the Belgian MEP Marie Arena, a companion of Eva Kaili since 2020, and the Italian Francesco Giorgi (in the centre of the photo) have also been detained in this case. According to the newspaper Le Soir, Francesco Giorgi admitted to having accepted bribes from Doha to influence the decisions of the European Parliament regarding Qatar and Morocco. Giorgi also admitted to appointing the former Italian MEP Antonio Panzeri, who would be the mastermind of this corrupt operation.

The former vice-president of the European Parliament denies having received money from Qatar to influence her political decisions. Her Greek lawyer, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos (photo), claimed that Eva Kaili "did not know of the existence of this money" and accused her companion of having "betrayed the trust". The courts will decide on the responsibilities of each.