Belgium\u2019s federal prosecutor\u2019s office said on Wednesday that police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European Parliament and at his office in the Parliament\u2019s building in Brussels over suspected Russian interference.
\nProsecutors said in statement that the suspect\u2019s office in Strasbourg, where the EU Parliament\u2019s headquarters are located in France, was also searched in partnership with the EU\u2019s judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, and French judicial authorities.
\nThe raids took place less than two weeks before Europe-wide polls on June 6-9 to elect a new EU parliament.
\nThe investigation was announced last month by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who said his country\u2019s intelligence service has confirmed the existence of a network trying to undermine support for Ukraine.
\n\u201cThe searches are part of a case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organization and relates to indications of Russian interference, whereby Members of the European Parliament were approached and paid to promote Russian propaganda, prosecutors said.
\nProsecutors said they believe the employee played \u201ca significant role in this.\u201d
\nDe Croo said last month that the probe showed that members of the European Parliament were approached and offered money to promote Russian propaganda.
\n\u201cAccording to our intelligence service, the objectives of Moscow are very clear. The objective is to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European Parliament and to reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution,\u201d he said.
\nEU nations have poured billions of euros into Ukraine, along with significant amounts of weaponry and ammunition. They\u2019ve also slapped sanctions on top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, banks, companies and the energy sector since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Belgium\u2019s federal prosecutor\u2019s office said on Wednesday that police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European Parliament and at his office in the Parliament\u2019s building in Brussels over suspected Russian interference. Prosecutors said in statement that the suspect\u2019s office in Strasbourg, where the EU Parliament\u2019s headquarters are located in France, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23502,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23497\/revisions\/23502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}