Qatargate reforms helped us identify Huawei bribery scandal, Parliament president says

 

Qatargate reforms helped us identify Huawei bribery scandal, Parliament president says

 

Belgian authorities on Tuesday charged four people on counts of corruption and criminal organization.

 

March 18, 2025 8:23 pm CET

By Max Griera

https://www.politico.eu/article/qatargate-reforms-helped-identify-huawei-bribery-scandal-parliament-roberta-metsola/

 

The European Parliament's reforms in the wake of the cash-for-influence Qatargate scandal helped it identify alleged Huawei corruption earlier, Parliament President Roberta Metsola said Tuesday evening.

 

"I want the Parliament to continue to be open but I want to make sure that there are rules in place," Metsola said in an interview with media brand Euractiv during its relaunch event, in her first public comments on the latest bribery scandal hitting the heart of European democracy.

 

"It is also thanks to the rules that we put in that these things can get caught and can get caught earlier," she added.

 

The Parliament has been embroiled in a fresh corruption scandal that involves "preliminary charges of active corruption, forgery of documents, money laundering," Belgian federal prosecutors said last week.

 

Metsola argued that "on that fateful" night of December 2022 when the Qatargate scandal broke out, she had "two options."

 

Either changing nothing, because "there will always be people who will try to break the rules" or to look at which could be fixed. Metsola said she picked the latter, unfolding a 14-point plan that helped create the alarm bells that would sound for Parliament and the police to identify future cases of corruption.

 

“The one thing I will not do is allow the allegations or the alleged work of potentially a few individuals, to tarnish the work of hundreds of others," she added.

 

Belgian authorities on Tuesday charged four people on counts of corruption and criminal organization as part of an alleged cash-for-influence campaign by the Chinese technology giant Huawei.

 

Searches took place in the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday, which had already been sealed following raids on other addresses on March 13.

 

On March 14, the Parliament banned Huawei lobbyists from its premises. The European Commission followed suit by instructing the commissioners' Cabinets and staff at the directorates generals (departments) to halt all contact and meetings with the tech giant.

 

The Parliament is no stranger to Huawei’s troubles with authorities, as Metsola's so-called alarm bells rang in 2023.

 

In May that year, she said in a letter seen by POLITICO that the house’s safety department had contacted the Belgian authorities to acquire information “with regard to potential threats posed by Huawei’s activities in Belgium and, in particular, the risks for the European Parliament.”

 

She was answering a warning sent by two members of the European Parliament that followed POLITICO’s reporting on an investigation of Huawei by the Belgian intelligence services within wider efforts to shed light on China’s influence operations in Europe by nonstate actors. The lawmakers said those operations were “particularly concerning in the context of the Qatargate scandal.”