Live news: Carys charges £500m slump fee and earnings wary

[ad_1]

Roberta Metsola said the rules on informal gatherings and financing needed to be amended. © REUTERS

The president of the European Parliament has vowed to “strangle everything” in response to a scandal involving allegations that Qatar paid money to influence MPs.

Roberta Metsola said the rules around informal gatherings and financing need to be reformed to ensure the room is “not for sale”.

“There are . . . too many informal groupings that are potentially more amenable to influence. Too many organizations whose funding is not transparent. We are going to clamp down on everything and we are going to make sure . . . that everything is in place,” she said Thursday. And that Parliament is not for sale.

Metsola said the scandal, which saw Belgian police raid politicians’ homes and seize more than €1 million in cash, was “a blow to democracy and a blow to everything we’ve worked on for many years. It takes years to build trust but just a moment to bring it down.”

Belgium’s federal prosecutor said on Wednesday that three of the four suspects who were arrested, including Eva Kaili, who was deputy speaker of parliament before the scandal broke, remain in custody, while a fourth has been released with an electronic card.

“There will be no impunity, there will be no sweeping under the rug, there will be no business as usual,” Metsola added. I will do all I can, with my colleagues, in order to restore the prestige of the House of Democracy. . . This is clean, transparent, and this is not for sale to foreign parties seeking to undermine us.”

[ad_2]