Huawei gate, the Belgian investigation hits Forza Italia: revocation of immunity requested for two MEPs

What has been dubbed “ Huawei gate ” in Brussels is hitting Forza Italia. The Belgian prosecutor has asked the European Parliament to revoke the immunity that covers elected officials it considers involved in an alleged corruption ring involving MPs, assistants and lobbyists in the pay of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

Five MEPs are at risk of losing their immunity: the Bulgarian from Renew Nikola Minchev and the Maltese socialist Daniel Attard , but above all the three Italians Fulvio Martusciello , Salvatore De Meo and Giusi Princi , all from Forza Italia.

The request for the waiver of immunity marks the first step necessary to initiate a formal investigation, but it does not automatically result in an indictment.

For Princi , 24 hours later, the good news arrived: in a letter from the Belgian Prosecutor's Office addressed to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, the investigating judge received new elements from the federal police that justify the withdrawal of the request to revoke parliamentary immunity.

The name of Martusciello, head of the Forza Italia delegation in Brussels in the Popolari group, had already emerged last March when the Huawei case broke out with the arrest on March 13 of four lobbyists linked to the Chinese telecommunications giant, suspected of having tried to corrupt around fifteen former and current MEPs .

A few days later, a European arrest warrant was issued against his assistant Lucia Simeone by the Belgian judiciary, which took her to prison in Naples (Martusciello's collaborator was then placed under house arrest and then released) for criminal association, corruption and money laundering. The warrant was revoked four weeks later after Simeone agreed to collaborate with the Belgian judiciary, providing elements deemed useful for the development of the investigation.

The investigation into the alleged corruption “Made in Huawei” was born in a well-defined political-economic context : the race of telecommunications giants, both Chinese and non-Chinese, to win tenders for the development of the 5G network in Europe. This objective was openly opposed by the United States and part of the EU, which asked for the exclusion of the Chinese company for reasons of internal security: an exclusion that promptly occurred. According to the Belgian Prosecutor's Office, in an attempt to prevent their own “ban”, Huawei's lobbyists allegedly pushed some MEPs, in exchange for financial rewards and more, to put pressure on European institutions so that the company would not be excluded from tenders for telecommunications.

Central to the Belgian investigation would be a letter dated January 4, 2021 and signed by about fifteen current and former MEPs from the Popular and Socialist parties, attributed by the Prosecutor's Office to the Italian-Belgian lobbyist Valerio Ottati , another former assistant to Martusciello and Huawei's main contact for European affairs and believed to be the director of the alleged influence scheme.