Louis Colart is a journalist for the Belgian newspaper Le Soir and one of the three reporters who exposed Qatargate, one of the biggest corruption and money laundering scandals in recent years. His time is precious. In addition to the avalanche of requests he receives from media around the world for interviews, he continues tirelessly to investigate the case he broke on Friday, causing an earthquake near the foundation of the European Parliament, Greek daily Kathimerini said, as quoted by Rador.

According to Kolart, it all started in mid-September, when he and his colleagues from the publications Le Soir and Knack received information about a case that the authorities were investigating in connection with the European Parliament.

“Since then, we have started our journalistic investigation, which led to the first exposure on Friday, in parallel with a major police operation launched in the city of Brussels.”

According to him, the journalistic investigation lasted several weeks, and the police investigation has been ongoing for several months and began in mid-July.

Kathimerini asked the journalist what the money chain was according to the information he had.

“Investigators suspect that Qatar is providing money to high-ranking people in the European Parliament, and this is, in fact, the money that was found in very large quantities on Friday, first in the home of former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri and later in the first on the day of the vice-presidents of the European Parliament, the Greek woman Eva Kylie was caught red-handed, and a large amount of money was also found in her house. We do not know the exact amount [în ceea ce o privește pe doamna Kaili]but we are certainly talking about several hundred thousand euros,” says Colart.

When asked if he had information about other Greeks involved in the case, Louis Colart said he did not yet know about other Greeks, apart from Eva Kylie’s father. “Investigators saw Ms Kylie’s father leaving the Sofitel hotel not far from their flat with a bag which we understand was full of money.”

The journalist believes that soon there will be new developments in this scandal. “I think this is just the beginning,” he says. From the discussion, he hints that he has rarely encountered a similar case involving such large sums of illegal money.

As he admits, the task of this major investigation was to ensure the confidentiality of the sources: “When we discuss such sensitive matters with colleagues, in every situation it is difficult to avoid intercepting the discussions or the information that we have received.” .

• We remember that in recent days the European Parliament has been rocked by a high-profile corruption scandal after allegations that Qatar offered money and gifts to EP officials to influence their decision-making process.
• At the center of the accusations is the Greek MEP Eva Kaili, the vice-president of the European Parliament, who has been elected to the EP since 2014. She was arrested on Sunday and charged with corruption by Belgian authorities along with three other people.
• He would receive a lot of money from Qatar to influence his colleagues to make decisions beneficial to this country. At the time of her arrest, on Friday, the MEP would have been caught at the scene of the crime, having “bags of money”, so she could not claim parliamentary immunity.