There are few things stranger than the confluence of two corruption schemes, one European and with worldwide repercussions, and the other national, practically local and anecdotal. This is, however, what has happened with the investigation of Qatargate —in which a bribery scheme from Qatar and Morocco is being investigated to gain influence in the institutions of the European Union— and the network linked to the expelled judge Fernando Presencia, who was she accuses ministers, Supreme Court judges and all kinds of personalities of associating ministers, Supreme Court judges and all kinds of personalities with corrupt activities, without any evidence and with completely fabricated data.
The MEP and former Vice President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili has just filed a complaint with the Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office against two of the Presencia colleagues in the association she chairs, the Association Against Corruption and in Defense of Public Action (Acodap), set up according to the National Court to raise funds to fight against irregular practices and built, in reality, on lies, false documents and a lot of imagination. She assures that they sent false papers to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in which she was accused of receiving transfers from the Government of Qatar through a Panamanian company.
The complaint was presented by the former leader of the ultra-right National Brotherhood of Franco’s Guard, Alberto Royuela, and Juan Martínez Grasa. Both turned to the attorney general of the European Public Persecutors Office, based in Luxembourg, asking for protection and confidentiality regarding the terms of their complaint and assured that, thanks to their YouTube channel Expediente Royuela, which they maintain to allegedly air hidden matters (in reality, the bulk of the content tends towards conspiracy and invention), had anonymously received relevant information about Kaili’s dark practices. The platform spreads conspiracy theories that suggest that a network of corrupt politicians, judges and prosecutors have committed and concealed thousands of crimes in Spain. In the case of Greek politics, they overflowed the national borders and made the leap to the EU.
Specifically, they assured that they had known that, imminently, the former vice president was going to receive transfers from the Qatari government in those Panamanian shell companies. They sent a burofax to the attorney general from Barcelona on December 16, 2022, in which they assured that the deposit orders for these million-dollar amounts had been issued by the Qatari authority and that said companies would later transfer the funds “to their true recipients, who did not would be other than the officials involved and their families”. Attach some alleged bank details to give greater credibility to your complaint.
The question could not have gone beyond the anecdote if it had happened in Spain. Royuela and Judge Presencia joined their destinies thanks to the Acodap association, which has filed dozens of similar complaints in Spanish courts. They have gone against former President Zapatero, ministers like Robles and Belarra, and magistrates like Cándido Conde-Pumpido or Pablo Llarena. Also against renowned journalists and police chiefs. The page is dedicated to raising funds from the cover, where it is urgent to make donations. “We need donations. Help us support Judge Presencia, a brave judge who obtained dation in payment for the evicted. He beat the banks and they did not forgive him. Now they are going for her and her family,” says the website. The courts in Spain are already aware of the practices of the association, which is under the focus of the National Court, but the same is not the case with Luxembourg, where the complaint caused immediate effects.
According to Kaili in her letter, the data provided to the European prosecutor is not only false, “but does not correspond to any reality” and was provided to try to generate “an appearance of reality that misleads” the tax authorities of the European Union and the Belgian court that is investigating it. In short, the complaint (in this case predictably false) complicated her future proceedings.
He extended her stay in prison
The former vice president, who is represented by the lawyer Gonzalo Boye, considers it a defamatory act, an action that sought to create confusion in the tax and judicial authorities “inducing them to believe what does not exist” and deceive third parties to get financing their activities. The complaint generated a whole series of verifications that caused her stay in provisional prison to be extended much longer than the rest of those investigated in her case. Outside of Spain, the practices of the authors of the Royuela File were not known.
Precisely this Wednesday, the magistrate of the National Court Joaquín Gadea ordered the arrest of Presencia. He had summoned Eva Kaili this Wednesday to assess her entry into provisional prison, but, after failing to appear, she was arrested hours later. Gadea also sent Royuela, his son Santiago and Martínez Grasa, to provisional prison.
The Greek Kaili is one of those involved in the bribery scandal known as Qatargate for which the Gulf country and Morocco paid a network of MEPs and assistants to help improve the image of both countries. She was released on probation last April after spending almost five months in pretrial detention. Her lawyers considered that the Belgian Justice was being excessively harsh, since she was the only one, among all those involved, who was still in jail. Kaili is not considered the key piece of the investigation, a role played by Pier-Antonio Panzeri, an old Italian socialist MEP who, after leaving the institution in 2019, focused on the creation of an NGO through which they would have managed payments. His former assistant, Francesco Giorgi, now Kaili’s partner and father of her daughter, would have been the link through which the Greek would have been involved in the plot.
