EU court backs Qatargate suspect Eva Kaili in transparency case

The European Union’s General Court ruled Wednesday in favor of former MEP Eva Kaili, annulling the European Parliament’s decision to block her access to documents about suspected misuse of parliamentary assistant allowances.

Kaili — also a key suspect in the EU’s long-running Qatargate corruption scandal — had requested the documents under the EU’s transparency regulation, but in July 2023 the Parliament rejected her request citing concerns that the disclosure would interfere with ongoing legal proceedings.

According to the General Court, the European Parliament wrongly applied an EU transparency rule to withhold documents, and rejected the institution’s arguments that releasing them would harm a related court case or violate legal fairness.

“The requested documents … were not drawn up for the purposes of the proceedings … and do not contain internal positions of the Parliament relating to that case file,” the Court said.

The court explained that the subject matter of the document Kaili requested is different from the subject matter of the case against her.

“In those circumstances, access to the requested documents cannot be refused on the ground of the protection of court proceedings,” it said.

Kaili, 46, served as a Greek MEP from 2014 and as Parliament vice president from January 2022 until December 2022, when she was arrested on preliminary charges of corruption, money laundering, and participation in a criminal organization as part of the Qatargate investigation into influence operations by foreign nations in Brussels.

Days after her arrest, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) requested the lifting of her parliamentary immunity, based on a report from the the EU’s anti-fraud office (OLAF) relating to “suspicion of fraud detrimental to the EU budget,” over alleged irregularities in assistants’ salaries.

In February 2023, Kaili appealed the immunity request. Her lawyer Spyros Pappas called the prosecutor’s action “unjustified,” arguing that the investigation had already been completed by OLAF and involved “facts dating back to past years.”

In February last year, the European Parliament unanimously lifted Kaili’s immunity to allow the EPPO/OLAF prosecution to proceed.