She became the face of “Qatargate”. Stripped of her duties as Vice-President of the European Parliament and excluded from Pasok, the Greek socialist party of which she is an elected representative, Eva Kaïlí will be heard on December 22. A look back at a dazzling career in politics.
Eva Kaïlí remains in prison. The 44-year-old former television presenter, who became a member of the European Parliament and then one of the 14 vice-presidents of the European body, has spent her entire political career in Pasok, the Greek socialist party. A party which excluded her from its ranks on Sunday and pressured her to resign from her mandate as an MEP. She was also dismissed as vice president on Tuesdayby a final vote: 625 MPs out of 628 votes cast voted in favour.
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In Greece, his personal assets were also frozen by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority: “bank accounts, safes, companies and any other financial assets”, according to the president of the anti-money laundering authority , Haralambos Vourliotis, quoted by a member of the same organization. The Greek banking establishments and the competent State services have already been informed of this measure by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, according to this member of this institution. The asset freeze also concerns members of Ms. Kaïlí’s close family, such as her parents, according to the same source, quoted by AFP. In the sights of the Authority is also a real estate company recently established in the chic Athens district of Kolonaki, which would have been created by the MEP and her Italian companion Francesco Giorgi, also imprisoned in Belgium.
A rapid political career
It was in the early 2000s that the Greeks discovered the young woman. She then presents on the private channel Mega the television news of the weekend. Eva Kaïlí first took courses in architecture, then in international and European relations and journalism. She also got involved in politics very early, within the Socialist Youth and became, in 1998, municipal councilor of Thessaloniki, the city where she was born in 1978. She stood for legislative elections for the first time in 2004. A first failure, quickly erased since three years later, in 2007, she became at the age of 29 the youngest deputy of Pasok.
A party whose commentators write that she was a “controversial” figure, due to statements that were not in line with her social commitment, in particular. In 2014, she was elected for the first time to the European Parliament in the Socialists and Democrats group, and re-elected in 2019. In January 2022, she was elected vice-president of the institution in the first round.
It was at the end of last week that the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office launched a vast anti-corruption operation involving Qatar. Several people, including the member’s companion, are then arrested and imprisoned ; large sums of money are discovered. Eva Kaïlí went to Qatar in early November where she welcomed, in the presence of the Minister of Labour, the emirate’s reforms in this sector. Qatar’s organization of the World Cup bears witness to the “ historic transformation of a country whose reforms have inspired the Arab world “, had also assured the deputy at the end of November at the podium of the European Parliament. Remarks which had then caused a stir in the ranks of the left as well as liberals and centrists.
(and with agencies)