An Italian union leader has been sacked from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) after he disclosed taking money from the main suspect in the Qatargate bribery scandal that has shaken the European parliament.
Luca Visentini was removed from his position as ITUC general secretary on Saturday following the results of an investigation. “The meeting decided that Luca Visentini no longer had the confidence of the general council as ITUC general secretary,” the trade union body said in a statement.
Visentini was elected as ITUC’s general secretary last November, but was suspended less than a month later after the cash-for-influence scandal was revealed by Belgian prosecutors. He was arrested on the first day of raids by Belgian police, but released without charge.
In a statement released in December, Visentini said he had taken a donation “for a sum lower than €50,000” from Fight Impunity, a Brussels NGO founded by the chief suspect in the bribery scandal, the former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri.
In his statement, Visentini said the donation was to reimburse some of the costs of running his campaign to become the ITUC general secretary. “It was in no way connected to a corruption attempt or aimed at influencing my position on Qatar,” he said.
A month after this statement, Panzeri struck a plea-bargain deal with prosecutors, promising to give information about the corruption network, which is said to involve cash payments from Qatar and Morocco to sway decisions in the European parliament.
Responding to this weekend’s meeting, Visentini said he deeply regretted the ITUC’s decision and repeated that he was innocent of all charges. “I was not bribed in any way when I received a donation and I didn’t keep any money for myself, but put it all at the disposal of the trade union movement,” he said.
The ITUC, which has 332 member organisations in 163 countries, said a special commission created to look into the allegations had found “no evidence of donations from either Qatar or Morocco influencing the ITUC’s policies or programmes”.
The organisation’s president, Akiko Gono, said the events of the past few months had “caused significant damage to the ITUC’s reputation” and she promised “new and reinforced rules and processes”. She added: “We are determined to protect the ITUC from any form of improper influence, or indeed the appearance of such influence.”
The trade union umbrella group said it would elect a new general secretary “as soon as practicable”.
Until November last year, Visentini was general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which would have brought him into regular contact with European lawmakers. When the scandal emerged, the the ETUC said it had “no reason to believe” that it had any connection to it.
