A new entry for the examples in the dictionary:
When agents from La Sûreté de l’Etat, Belgium’s intelligence service,
Actually, a double
broke into the Brussels home of a former Italian MEP this summer they could scarcely believe what they found: €700,000 (£610,00) in cash, most of it in crisp new €50 notes.
€500 notes exist for a reason.
500 Reichsmark notes are usually fake.
These MEPs aren’t all fools, you know
“a veteran politician, who, after 15 years in the European Parliament, had in 2019 set up a human rights charity”: as one does.
Anyway if you want a splurge in the papers be sure to arrest a good-looking girl. Works wonders.
P.S. Should someone be charged with fraud for persuading the Quataris that the Euro Parliament matters much?
Interesting choice of currency. Maybe from a few of Rishi’s bounce-back loans? It’s not as if anyone over here actually checked applications.
Mind you I can sympathise with the build-up of £50 notes as it’s a bugger trying to get shops to accept them.
P.s. what’s the Italian for “Sistah Space”?
Just over six hundred quid? Wow, Belgiuan politicians are cheap.
The picture of the haul in the Telegraph indeed shows fifty-euro notes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/17/could-corruption-scandal-signal-end-eu/
P.S. Should someone be charged with fraud for persuading the Qataris that the Euro Parliament matters much?
Indeed: bribing the wrong people = schoolboy error.
Meh.. The beigian intelligence service was only involved because they *had* to be, given the international and “sensitive” nature of the bribery.
Token show of Presence, and all that. You don’t see them around when things get actually dangerous, or well after the special units have cleared the scene to take the credit.
I wonder if the Qataris have an international fund for persuading important foreign people that Qatar good and around 1/10th of this has ended up going to people of no influence and that’s the bit that has been discovered to date.
Not that they need it of course as what Qatar sells to the world is really useful.