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By SARAH WHEATON
Tips, tales, traumas to @swheaton or influence@politico.eu | View in your browser
HOWDY. Welcome to the last edition of EU Influence for this 10th term of the European Parliament. We’re bidding it farewell with a couple of investigative mic drops.
SCHRÖDINGER’S JUNKET
PAKISTAN’S LUXE COURTSHIP OF A CZECH MEP: On August 31, 2022, Tomáš Zdechovský urged his native Czech Republic to help Pakistan recover from “havoc” caused by unprecedented flooding.
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Personal data submitted: Earlier that summer, Zdechovský, an EPP MEP, had considered spending two weeks that August in Pakistan for an all-expense paid visit. The idea was to “explore more business opportunities and to strengthen people to people relations between Pakistan and the Czech Republic,” according to a formal invitation, viewed by EU Influence, from the chairman of a Pakistani travel and visa services company. The executive, Malik Rizwan Arshad of the Maleeha Group of Companies, promised to cover all the costs for Zdechovský and two of his Parliamentary assistants. The invitation, dated July 28, 2022, includes their full names and passport numbers. The visit was supposed to start August 5, running through the 20th.
Further documents viewed by EU Influence show reservation confirmations at the 5-star Serena Islamabad Hotel, with a deluxe king room for each of the three guests. The room rate of 25,000 Pakistani rupees (€86) per night would be paid by the “Senate of Pakistan.”
Blame it on the rain: But Pakistan was inundated by those unprecedented floods, which ultimately submerged a third of the country. And the trip did not happen as planned. Zdechovský even appeared in a Czech television studio on August 8.
Zdechovský says the trip never ended up happening. The guy who claims he paid for it says otherwise …
BENEFACTOR SAYS THE TRIP HAPPENED THIS YEAR: Reached on WhatsApp, Maleeha Chairman Arshad confirmed the authenticity of the invitation letter and said that after flood-related delays, the delegation did visit “three months ago.” They visited factories and met officials, said Arshad, explaining that Maleeha is an Overseas Employment Promoter, an official Pakistani government designation for companies that help people emigrate abroad for work.
‘Mutual friend’: “It was a good gesture meeting with them and we all responded fairly & professionally,” Arshad said in a text. He said “one mutual friend” informed the MEP about the Overseas Employment Program.
‘Well established business man’: Arshad said his company covered the trip’s costs, despite the Senate being listed on the hotel confirmation. “We got the special discounts through our government departments that’s why we book through them,” he said in a text. “Hey I am a well established business man here in Islamabad Pakistan.”
A spokesman for the Pakistani Senate did not reply to an email sent overnight.
Timing unclear: After we pressed Arshad for the exact timing of the trip, he replied that he couldn’t tell us anything else. Our last WhatsApp to him does not appear to have been delivered.
ZDECHOVSKÝ SAYS IT NEVER HAPPENED: “The trip to Pakistan never took place,” Zdechovský said in an email. He’d been invited as a member of the Parliament’s official delegation to South Asia, he said, but “after consideration of all the elements of the journey, I declined the invitation.”
Declining through a ‘counterpart’: Zdechovský said a “Pakistani counterpart” began the trip preparations, hence the shared passports. Yet Zdechovský said the decision to withdraw “was relayed to the counterpart in person” — so there’s no paper trail about the withdrawal.
Hard to prove a negative: Zdechovský offered to share his calendar, photographic evidence and any other data showing that he wasn’t in Pakistan during a requested period — and EU Influence acknowledges we don’t have specific dates to ask about. Asked to identify his “counterpart,” Zdechovský said he has been “in touch with official Pakistani partners.”
Spotty track record: Zdechovský has an inconsistent history when it comes to disclosures. The Guardian reported on an undeclared trip to Bahrain in April 2022, and earlier this year, his team acknowledged a failure to log his meeting with the outgoing Sri Lankan ambassador.
“The journey has not been postponed, since it never took place,” Zdechovský reiterated.
(Extra thanks to Ketrin Jochecová for Czech language assistance on this item.)
SPEAKING OF SRI LANKA: Parliament President Roberta Metsola shut down the Sri Lanka friendship group earlier this year, saying a recent gathering, organized by Zdechovský (who formerly chaired the group), broke post-Qatargate rules. The island nation’s foreign minister had referred to the friendship group on social media, but Zdechovský consistently protested that the gathering of MEPs and Sri Lankan officials did not constitute a friendship group and that he was asking Colombo to correct the record.
What’s in a name? Two weeks after our early March deadline, we finally heard back from the Sri Lankan embassy, and we’ll share the reply now for the record: “The Embassy wishes to inform that ‘Friends of Sri Lanka Group in the European Parliament’ no longer exists and any reference made to such a group was unintentional. We acknowledge the importance of accurately representing the nature of parliamentary interactions and regrets any confusion that may have arisen as a result of this oversight,” said Chandana Weerasena, Sri Lanka’s new envoy in Brussels.
BACK TO NORMAL
DOHA ALLIES GET BACK IN THE GAME: A murky, Qatar-friendly NGO is back in action after a Qatargate-era hiatus.
Anti-Emirates, ambiguous origins: “Joe from Democracy Centre For Transparency” sent MEPs an email with a petition earlier this year. He was seeking “decisive action” from the European Parliament to end what he alleged was the United Arab Emirates’ support for a Sudanese paramilitary force. The UAE says it backs a ceasefire, but the substance of the request isn’t our interest here.
It’s Joe, and his unidentified bosses and bankrollers.
Not a new player: Democracy Centre Transparency isn’t transparent, and it isn’t new. Founded in 2018, according to its website, it was particularly active in 2021, promoting a petition to crack down on the UAE’s money laundering and even hosting some mainstream MEPs for virtual panel discussions. In fact, at least 39 MEPs engaged with the group, either by signing petitions or appearing in webinars.
“We strive to reinforce the values of European freedom, democracy, liberty, and humanism by ensuring foreign intervention is identified, curtailed and prevented,” its website says.
Taking sides in Gulf geopolitics: Yet its particular mix of issues suggests the NGO might be a bit of unidentified foreign intervention itself. It’s not listed in the Transparency Register, and the site does not list managers, funders or board members. What it does have is heavy criticism of the UAE and more recently Israel. It also defended Qatar in 2021 with articles like “UAE PR machine promote fake news on Qatar World Cup, push for European Boycott,” which linked prominently to a “factsheet” on Qatari labor practices produced by Doha’s Government Communications Office. (Like much of DCT’s website, that article has been taken down, so we’re using the Wayback Machine archive.)
Qatargate parallels: On November 24, 2022, just weeks before Qatargate would erupt with a series of arrests, another supposed staff member at DCT, “Simons Dover”, emailed a Parliament vice-president, decrying a resolution to be voted on that day that was set to criticize Qatar for human rights abuses.
Panzeri-style scheme: Qatargate revealed how ex-MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri used a few big names to woo others and build credibility for his loftily-named NGO, Fight Impunity, without actually being transparent or building up a serious reputation. The story of DCT has striking parallels, including a geopolitical focus on Gulf rivalries.
Flooding the zone: Along with Eddy Wax, EU Influence has reached out to just about any name we could find associated with the group — including dozens of MEPs and other Brussels bubble players who appeared on DCT panels or signed petitions.
… and hitting a wall: Key inside players either refused to help or didn’t get back to us — including Joe. Emails to DCT’s main account bounced back. The listed phone number went to a freshly arrived university student’s mobile. EU Influence received a message from a Gmail account purporting to be DCT, but they wouldn’t provide a name or number even for an off-record exchange. Addresses listed on DCT’s current letterhead are both Regus serviced office spaces with no signs of the group, as POLITICO’s Julius Brinkmann discovered in Berlin and your author found down the street on Rue des Colonies.
Nonetheless, this item reflects what we’ve been able to learn about who was behind the group, and how an NGO with “Transparency” in the name managed to build credibility without being transparent.
RUNNING THEMES: Two themes emerged: Links to the Qatari government and advocates for the Palestinian cause, in line with standing regional alliances.
Committed journalists: When we started asking questions, two names emerged: Sarhan Basem and Sameh Habeeb. They both list journalism as a primary profession.
Brussels connector: Basem, who hails from Gaza but said he avoids writing about the subject to stay neutral, is the managing director of Brussels Morning, a media outlet founded in 2020.
In 2020 and 2021, he helped recruit speakers to participate in DCTransparency panels. In some cases, he connected Parliament spokespeople to the NGO’s staff, according to WhatsApp messages viewed by EU Influence. He also directly recruited an outside panelist to appear at an event. Basem was quite insistent, the panelist recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity, even though the panelist didn’t have much expertise in the topic: arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Generous helper: In a series of phone calls and WhatsApps with EU Influence, Basem cast himself as a prolific and generous middleman who receives “hundreds” of requests for introductions — with no interest in the outcome. “I receive a request from Uzbekistan, they want to host an MEP in the embassy. ‘Do you know some MEPs? Who can do it?’” Basem recalled a recent example. He’ll offer up the “coordinates of a press officer, media adviser. But I cannot follow after that,” he said.
Basem said he agreed to make these kinds of connections for DCT after receiving a request to help from someone named Jozzef, but that he could not find any contact information for Jozzef Hanna other than info@dctransparency.com. We both came to the same conclusion: That Jozzef Hanna was probably a fake name.
Informed that we would be describing his role as helping to recruit speakers for DCT panels, Basem replied that he would take legal action to protect his physical safety while traveling in the Middle East, and to protect his reputation. “I have never served this organisation or any other similar organisation. I cannot [do] journalism and lobbying at the same time,” he texted.
“I do not have to check the background of every contact person,” Basem added. “Connecting people never means that I am, as a third party, involved.”
Activist, candidate, think tanker: Sameh Habeeb handed out assignments for DCT projects, according to a person familiar with the NGO’s operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive information. A former journalist, Habeeb is now running for a seat in the British parliament, even as he works to save his own family trapped in Gaza. He was suspended from the Labour Party in 2018 over alleged antisemitism, which he denies. Habeeb has also rebutted detailed allegations in a blog that he set up a series of websites that look like newspapers but post content from elsewhere — as well as from his press-release distribution company News Wire Now. The same blog post, by the journalist Brian Whitaker, also found that Habeeb’s PR agency listed fake staff and phone numbers as it pushed Doha’s line in the U.K.
Habeeb’s reply: “That organisation invited me to speak at their event few years ago but I cancelled last minute because of their politics,” Habeeb said in a message received after publication of this newsletter. (Habeeb did not respond to our pre-publication queries sent through multiple channels over a period of weeks, up to the night before publication, including a personal Gmail account, X, and various entities named and not named here.)
RECYCLING CONTENT: DCT also recycles content from elsewhere. Much of its content is attributed generically to “Research Staff,” but a large proportion of its “Lobby Monitor” reports come from IBI.
That’s a business intelligence outfit called IBI World Limited. Founder Paolo Fusi said he was asked to share content with a new website, DCT, several years ago after his team wrote articles critical of the United Arab Emirates and the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. The connection, he said, was an Italian working for the Qatari embassy in Italy.
“It looks like the embassy of Qatar in Rome had one or two employees who are representing the interest of the Palestinian people,” Fusi said. He’s since asked DCT to take his material down.
Quiet Qataris: Our Qatargate-era press contact at Doha’s Government Communications Office didn’t respond to emails, calls and text messages about this. Neither has the Qatari embassy in Rome.
PARLIAMENT’S IMPRIMATUR: While DCT offers little information about itself, its website is filled with names of high-profile MEPs — especially from Renew, but also from S&D, the EPP and The Left — who agreed to speak at DCT’s online events in late 2020 and 2021.
Seems legit enough: Reached for comment, MEPs acknowledged that they didn’t ask a lot of questions or check the Transparency Register before committing to talk about subjects they cared about. As MEP Barry Andrews put it, of his participation in a panel on war crimes in Yemen: “To the best of our recollection, we checked the website of the organization. Given the urgent humanitarian crisis, which was the subject matter of the discussion, we didn’t go any further.”
Blame the press guy: DCT’s first event appears to have been a November 2020 seminar on human rights in Egypt and they debuted with a big name: Fabio Massimo Castaldo, the Parliament’s VP in charge of human rights at the time, served as chair. In an email, he pinned the blame on the 5Stars MEPs’ spokesman, saying he “trusted” the spokesman’s recommendation and “did not delve into the details” about the NGO’s funding and origins. (Castaldo has since quit the 5Stars and joined a party linked to the Renew group in the Parliament.)
Everyone else was doing it: The early events apparently enabled the later ones. “Since the organization held panels with credible partners before, no concerns arose for him or his team,” said an aide to MEP Jan-Christoph Oetjen of a February 2021 workshop on migration in Europe. (Oetjen was elected a vice president of the Parliament in January.)
And are still doing it … Danish Renew MEP Karen Melchior was one of at least 12 MEPs who signed a DCT petition in 2021 calling for a crackdown on Emirati money laundering, and she was one of at least two who signed the Sudan-UAE petition in 2024. “There were no immediate red flags for my team about the sender of the request,” Melchior told Eddy, noting the broad array of MEPs who had appeared at events and “professional” website. [EU Influence thought bubble: Why is the Transparency Register not part of this “red flags” check, especially for groups with a Brussels address?]
… for legitimate reasons: It’s also clear from Melchior’s detailed reply to Eddy that she wanted to sign these petitions because she agreed with them. Of the 2024 petition on Sudan, she said, “it is the understanding of my team that it is likely the UAE is supporting [the Sudanese paramilitary force] and so fueling the conflict.”
**As the European elections approach, city leaders at Eurocities 2024 in Cluj-Napoca will set the agenda on innovation, sustainability, and inclusion, while tackling democracy and investment challenges, from 29-31 May. Discover more. #LocalFutureEU**
ETHICS TIDBITS
PARLIAMENT ADOPTS ETHICS BODY DEAL: As one of its last acts today, the Strasbourg plenary backed the inter-institutional ethics body deal, with a vote of 301 in favor and 216 against. The EPP remained opposed until the end. Transparency International EU, on the other hand, called today’s vote the “bare minimum” for a “weak tool.”
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Don’t forget about the EESC: The European Economic and Social Committee’s plenary also approved joining the agreement today.
NO FURTHER LOOK AT FERBER: The Parliament will not investigate German conservative Markus Ferber following my colleague Bjarke Smith-Meyer’s investigation into the EPP MEP’s relationship with Dutch businessman Michael Heijmeijer. The decision was made effective last week during Parliament’s Conference of Presidents, a routine gathering of political group chairs and Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Read more.
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SECOND ACTS
SIDE GIG: Amazon Web Services’ EU affairs director Sofía Trénor Michelena has released her second album. You can listen on Spotify here.
SPOTTED: Gianfranco Dell’Alba, an ex-MEP and co-founder (with Pier Antonio Panzeri) of besmirched NGO Fight Impunity, at the Strasbourg Parliament plenary with a brown lobbyist badge.
INFLUENCERS
TECH GIANT’S NEW BOSS FACES POLITICAL BALANCING ACT: A new CEO took over this week at Europe’s largest tech firm, Dutch chips equipment supplier ASML. ASML is caught in the U.S.-Chinese fight over its key chip-printing machines. Last year, the U.S. pressured the Netherlands into blocking some of ASML’s sales to China.
Lobbying up: Frenchman Christophe Fouquet, taking the helm of ASML, must deal with competing interests in The Hague, Washington and Brussels. To navigate them, ASML has quietly been building up its lobbying presence in all three cities — with key hires such as a former Dutch foreign trade minister as its new top lobbyist and a range of leading tech policy consulting firms to assist in its government outreach. Read more about ASML’s boosted lobbying game here, by POLITICO’s Pieter Haeck.
AGRI-FOOD
— Wim van der Velden joined the food team of Edelman Global Advisory. He was previously with Dentons Global Advisors.
— Nina Peacock has been promoted to director of public policy and government relations Europe at Kellanova (formerly known as the Kellogg Company). Full disclosure: EU Influence is lobbying Peacock to lobby her bosses to sell Cheez-Its in the European market.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
— Hugo Pinto de Abreu started working at the European Commission as a policy officer in the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. He was previously with the University of Porto.
DIPLOMACY
— Petros Aikaterinis became a political officer at the EU Delegation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Sultanate of Oman.
PACKAGING
— Clara Beser Ramada joins EUROPEN as public affairs manager. She was with Weber Shandwick before.
SUSTAINABILITY
— Cecilia Mattea started as Europe regional lead at the IRMA Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, joining from Transport & Environment.
— Dries Acke has been promoted to Deputy CEO at SolarPower Europe.
TECH
— David Garcia joined FGS Global as director leading the EU digital & tech policy team in Brussels. He was previously with Hanbury Strategy.
— Karina Nimara has joined Hanbury Strategy as director in the EU digital team, having previously worked at Developers Alliance.
— Christian von Stamm Jonasson has joined Hanbury Strategy as an account manager leading on EU cybersecurity policy. He previously worked at the Danish Chamber of Commerce in Copenhagen.
THANKS TO: Eddy Wax, Julius Brinkmann, Elisa Braun, Pieter Haeck, Aoife White and especially Ketrin Jochecová; web producer Giulia Poloni and my editors Paul Dallison and Khushbu Shah.
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify a reference to Qatar’s embassy in Italy and a response from Sameh Habeen after publication.
Correction: This newsletter has also been updated to correctly spell the name of Hugo Pinto de Abreu, a new policy officer in the Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture.
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