Qatargate: Egos battle at judge’s recusal hearing

BRUSSELS — For once, Michel Claise was the one being judged, not the one doing the judging.

Claise, the lead investigative judge in the European Parliament corruption probe, was at the center of a consequential hearing at the Brussels court of appeal, which will decide whether he can continue on with the case after defendants’ lawyers called for his recusal.

What was most on display Tuesday in the courtroom was a battle of egos — with an absent fighter. Claise, the person whose fate is to be decided, was not present, which is standard practice for such recusal hearings.

The influence-buying scandal has shaken the European Union to its core, after Belgian authorities raided homes and offices in December 2022 amid allegations that Qatar and Morocco handed out cash and gifts to secure favorable treatment in the European Parliament.

Inside the courtroom, located in the basement of Brussels’ eternally-renovated Palais de Justice, not even half a dozen people waited for the hearing to start. The audience was silent in the overheated room.

That silence broke as the other fighter, Marc Tarabella, appeared in the courtroom, handcuffed and flanked by three policemen, and the hearing started.

Tarabella, a Belgian MEP, is one of several suspects in the case — among the most recently nabbed.

Wearing a dark grey jumpsuit, with hunched shoulders, he looked haggard — “damaged,” as his lawyer later put it.

Maxim Töller, the lawyer for Tarabella, filed the recusal request because he thinks that Claise, the famed Brussels-based sheriff investigating Qatargate suspects, is biased, as allegedly evidenced in text leaked from his client’s arrest warrant.

But Claise is not backing down.

Tarabella did not speak during the hearing.

It was surely a shift in atmosphere: Gone were the walls of TV cameras and mics hovering around lawyers in the hope of getting the most minor comment.

Instead, another battle was brewing: between the federal magistrate Raphaël Malagnini, representing Claise; and Töller, Tarabella’s lawyer.

At times, the verbal joust even got personal.

“The motion … is inadmissible, it is unfounded, it lacks any intellectual coherence,” the federal magistrate said of the recusal request.

It is “the work of someone who, because of his social position, cannot stand being treated like an average citizen, and who wants to destabilize the investigating judge,” Malagnini added, referring to Tarabella.

At the center of it all is one key sentence: In the arrest warrant, Claise says Tarabella’s public positions “were initially not in favor of Qatar, and these positions were then reversed when suspicious transfers of funds were detected.”

For Tarabella’s lawyer, this violates his client’s presumption of innocence.

“Everywhere and at every moment, [the judge] has to be careful with the terms he uses so as not to betray his deepest feelings,” Töller said, adding that Claise’s words are “obviously tantamount to saying that he is guilty of corruption.”

For the prosecutors, Töller’s recusal attempt is merely gumming up the works, and is also “prejudicial to the other defendants, since it inevitably slows down the trial,” Malagnini said.

A decision is expected on March 14. But even without a winner known yet, it’s already clear the case won’t end there: Lawyers are likely to appeal any decision.

Barbara Moens and Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed reporting.