Off Investigation, a news website, conducted an investigation into the major corruption scandal within the European Parliament (EP) in which Morocco is implicated. The investigation provided new evidence regarding the bribes paid by the Moroccan authorities to conceal their occupation of Western Sahara since 1975 and to plunder the natural resources of this territory.
The investigation, conducted by Maïlys Khider for Off Investigation, stated that former Members of European Parliament, Antonio Panzeri and Gilles Pargneaux (the former currently in prison and the latter under investigation by Belgian authorities), have been manipulated for years by the Moroccan kingdom to advocate for its position on Western Sahara.
Based on testimonies from inside the Parliament, the author of the article reported that during a meeting with Antonio Panzeri in 2015, while he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Subcommittee on Human Rights, a witness present noted that Panzeri “made a distinction between Sahrawis living in Western Sahara and those living in Sahrawi refugee camps”.
Before adding that Panzeri “never took into consideration the possibility of self-determination for the Sahrawi people”.
The journalist also provided further evidence by claiming to have consulted a confidential document from 2011 that explicitly shows how the Moroccan authorities negotiated with Antonio Panzeri, who at the time was the President of the Maghreb Delegation of the European Parliament (DMAG), to better defend their positions on Western Sahara.
The Moroccan intelligence report praised Panzeri’s “constructive ambiguity” towards his “attitudes towards different parties”, which indicates that he could be “either a powerful ally or a formidable adversary”. Menouar Alem, the high-ranking Moroccan official who signed the report, argued for “shaping Mr. Panzeri’s idea” on the issue of Western Sahara.
Regarding French MEP Gilles Pargneaux, a former First Secretary of the Socialist Federation of the North and member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019, Maïlys Khider stated that a source provided Off Investigation with minutes from a meeting of the European Union-Morocco Friendship Group held in 2011 under Pargneaux’s presidency.
Substantially, “the minutes in question show how Pargneaux used his influence to persuade his colleagues of the validity of Moroccan positions, particularly regarding human rights in the kingdom, transparency of elections, and democracy in Morocco,” noted the author of the investigation.
Similarly, the investigation reported how the French deputy worked on the ground to thank his “employer.”
In this regard, she recounted that Gilles Pargneaux flew to the occupied Western Sahara just after receiving a decoration, on the king’s order, during an official ceremony at the Moroccan Parliament.
Maïlys Khider highlighted, in the same context, that Gilles Pargneaux’s latest lobbying action in favor of Morocco “was the creation in 2018 of the EuroMedA Foundation.”
Maïlys Khider stated that in addition to the French MEP, Salaheddine Mezouar, President of the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (the union of Moroccan employers) and Cheikh Biadillah, who was elected to the Moroccan House of Councillors and President of the Morocco-EU parliamentary friendship group, were also involved in the creation of the EuroMedA Foundation in 2018.
