The police are also investigating the employees of the offices of Belgian MEPs

In a major corruption investigation the Belgian police also sealed off the offices of the employees of two Belgian MEPs. The investigation, which has been going on since July, was revealed yesterday after a series of house searches. Belgian justice suspects an unnamed Gulf state of corruption. According to Belgian media, it is Qatar.

The sealed offices would belong to the employees of MEPs Marie Arena and Marc Tarabella, who sit in the European Parliament on behalf of the Walloon Socialist Party. The Belgian public prosecutor has not yet confirmed these names.

During the at least sixteen house searches that took place yesterday, around 600,000 euros in cash were seized, as well as an unknown number of data carriers such as computers and telephones. Five people were arrested.

According to the federal prosecutor in Belgium, Qatar tried to influence the economic and political decisions of the European Parliament. This would have happened by “paying large sums of money or offering significant gifts to third parties occupying an important political and/or strategic position within the European Parliament”. There would be no connection with the FIFA World Cup, which Qatar hosts.

One of the 14 vice-presidents of the European Parliament, the Greek Eva Kaili, was also arrested for questioning. Kaili, a former TV presenter who had been in the Greek PASOK party’s EP since 2014, has since been expelled from her party and expelled from the European Social Democratic Group. It will become clear tomorrow whether she will be detained longer.

Among those arrested would also be an Italian lobbyist and trade unionist Luca Visentini, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) since last month. It is a trade union umbrella organization with over 200 million members worldwide. The five detainees are still being questioned today in Brussels.

European news channel Euronews has asked the European Parliament for more information on the arrests, but received a response that the parliament is silent on the ongoing prosecutions. The question will be debated in Strasbourg on Monday.

The European People’s Party, the largest in the European Parliament, wants to get to the bottom of things and stresses that there is no room for corruption.

The Greens also reacted with shock. “It’s quite shocking if these suspicions turn out to be true,” German Green MEP Anna Cavazzini wrote on Twitter of Kaili’s arrest. “I heard his very pro-Qatari speech in plenary and was very surprised,” she wrote, referring to a speech in which Kaili called Qatar a pioneer in labor rights.