Head of global trade union body sacked after donation investigation

theguardian.com:

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 into allegations against him. “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 ITUC 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 later 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, adding: “It was in no way connected to a corruption attempt or aimed at influencing my position on Qatar.”

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.

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