Europe’s strongest political group has been raided by police over an alleged kick-back scheme within the final EU elections.
The HQ of the centre-right European Folks’s Social gathering (EPP), located on the Rue du Commerce within the coronary heart of the EU district in Brussels, noticed Belgian and German police sweep in unexpectedly at 9AM on Tuesday (4 April) morning .
The plainclothes officers had been looking for proof {that a} former workers member, Mario Voigt, took a private bribe in return for awarding an EPP contract to a German web agency in Jena, within the group’s digital marketing campaign for the 2019 EU vote, in line with prosecutors quoted by German media.
“We’re on the lookout for every thing that may serve to legally classify the accused’s actions on the EPP,” a German prosecutor informed the Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper.
Voigt is now parliamentary chief of the EPP’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union get together within the Thuringia area in Germany and has denied wrongdoing.
“Our shopper has not been responsible of something,” his legal professionals stated in a press release following the raid.
“The [police] go to is linked to an ongoing inquiry in Thuringia, Germany. The get together is cooperating in full transparency with the authorities concerned,” the EPP additionally stated in a press release.
Tuesday’s raid was not on the lookout for proof of broader EPP corruption, the Thuringia state prosecutor additionally informed media.
But it surely nonetheless got here as a bombshell in a nervous local weather within the EU capital following final 12 months’s Qatargate bribery scandal.
Qatargate, at first, centred spherical bribes allegedly taken by Greek MEP Eva Kaili, who was in Europe’s second largest group, the centre-left Socialists & Democrats, till they expelled her.
However when sleuths began digging, they discovered increasingly rot within the mycelium of EU establishments in nonetheless ongoing investigations.
Voigt was personally introduced in to Brussels to assist run the EPP’s digital advertisements 4 years in the past by fellow German MEP and long-time group chief Mafred Weber, the Thüringer Allgemeine stated.
And if Tuesday’s raid shocked workers on the EPP places of work, they need to have seen it coming.
The joint Belgian-German operation took months to plan as a result of complexities of EU “mutual authorized requests” and “European investigation orders”.
However Thuringian state police already raided Voigt’s house and enterprise premises final October.
The Thuringian parliament additionally lifted his immunity final September after police first discovered clues of a kick-back scheme in an unrelated investigation into the German web agency in Jena.
