This is an audio transcript of the podcast episode Power for Sale: Episode 2 — ‘Ocean’s Eleven’
News clips
Reports of squalid conditions and months of unpaid wages have cast a dark shadow over the World Cup.
Evidence that migrants working on infrastructure projects in the final months before the tournament have died or suffered abuse.
With the world watching, Qatar is trying to improve its image.
James Lynch
Qatar is not unique in the Gulf in having a deep, severe human rights crisis in relation to the way migrant workers are employed and their treatment.
Valentina Pop
This is James Lynch. He researches human rights in the Middle East. He is the expert on labour rights in Qatar.
James Lynch
Almost all manual labour is carried out by migrant workers, and they have for decades been treated very poorly, been discriminated against. They suffer from trafficking and forced labour.
Valentina Pop
So in 2010, when James heard that the World Cup would be hosted by Qatar, he had real concerns.
James Lynch
The city of Doha, you know, when I lived there in 2010, was not ready for a tournament on the scale of a World Cup.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Valentina Pop
The football tournament would require an enormous amount of construction, multiple stadiums, a metro system, an entirely new sewage system, new hotels and roads — all to be built under the scorching desert sun.
James Lynch
Hundreds of thousands of workers were probably recruited into the country who wouldn’t have been if the World Cup didn’t happen. And there were very serious concerns about the nature and number of deaths in the construction sector.
Valentina Pop
For a long time, perhaps the most concerned voice was the ITUC, the International Trade Union Confederation, an organisation responsible for the rights of millions of workers worldwide.
James Lynch
It’s worth saying in those first few years, the ITUC’s position was that Qatar was a slave state, that workers were going to die in their thousands and that the vote on the World Cup should be rerun.
Valentina Pop
And as ground was broken in the Doha desert, the worst-case scenario played out.
News clips
Numerous reports of worker exploitation, substandard living conditions and worker deaths on construction sites.
Now living in really, really appalling conditions. No showers, salty water and it’s making them sick and it’s really shocking to see. It really is.
Valentina Pop
But in 2017, the ITUC seemed to change their position on the labour conditions in Qatar.
James Lynch
Saying that claims around worker deaths were a myth and in fact, they became a kind of cheerleader. It was quite a shock.
Valentina Pop
It was a shift that sent the chill through James and the rest of the NGO community.
James Lynch
There is nothing wrong with advocacy groups deciding to be supportive of a government that’s reforming. But this praise had gone beyond fact into exaggeration, and was seriously misleading and was undermining of their advocacy. What we were seeing here was a trade union organisation that was really, very significantly overexaggerating the progress that had been made in a way that was become, it had become difficult to understand.
Valentina Pop
In the years leading up to the 2022 games, workers continued to die. And meanwhile, James says the ITUC looked the other way. But then as the games got closer, something else happened that was alarming to James. Members of the European parliament also joined the ITUC in praising Qatar. Members like Eva Kaili.
Eva Kaili voice clip
Today, the World Cup in Qatar is a proof, actually, of how sports diplomacy can achieve a historical transformation of a country, with reforms that inspired the Arab world.
Valentina Pop
Eva was giving floor speeches in support of Qatar’s progress on labour rights.
Eva Kaili voice clip
They committed to a vision by choice. And they opened to the world.
Valentina Pop
She wasn’t the only one, though. There were several MEPs who stood out in their public praise of Qatar leading up to the World Cup. James thought this was suspicious, but with the words Qatargate, everything made sense.
James Lynch
I guess, well, we wondered, you know, is that what’s been going on?
Valentina Pop
Especially as James heard the names of the people who were arrested. One of them was Eva Kaili, and one was a man who turned out to be central to this story, an Italian MEP turned lobbyist named Pier Antonio Panzeri. But the name James immediately recognised was Luca Visentini, the head of the ITUC, the trade organisation that had changed its tune on Qatar.
James Lynch
Yes, I remember this kind of almost funny but very shocking account of Visentini and Panzeri being together.
Valentina Pop
This is one of those stories from the scandal that really stuck with me. You just can’t make this stuff up. So it’s October of 2022. Two months before all the arrests and Belgian intelligence are watching Panzeri on a hidden camera they installed in his flat. He’s under surveillance. They see him talking to Visentini, who is running for the top job at the ITUC. Then Panzeri hands over €50,000 in cash to Visentini in envelopes with Santa Claus embossed on them. And as Panzeri passes the envelope, Visentini makes a comment.
James Lynch
And the comment is, it’s like we’re in Ocean’s Eleven.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Valentina Pop
Who was Panzeri? How did his Qatar operation work? And who else was involved? From the Financial Times, I’m Valentina Pop, and this is Power for Sale — Episode 2, Ocean’s Eleven.
In the days after the scandal broke, my colleagues descended on our Brussels office from everywhere, Milan, London and Athens. Eleni, our Athens correspondent, was one of the first people to show up. She told our audio producer, Persis, about it.
Eleni Varvitsioti
Here in this office, everybody, actually the whole office was working on this story.
Persis Love
What was the atmosphere?
Eleni Varvitsioti
It was buzzing. It was very buzzing. And we were all like, oh my God, this is a huge story.
Valentina Pop
We got right to work calling sources, people we thought might be connected to this investigation. We looked into rumours about members of parliament, lobbyists and their families going on luxurious trips to Qatar. And the suspects list kept growing with the assumption that there was more to come.
Eleni Varvitsioti
That was expectation that something big is going to come out, that many people are connected, that this is just a tip of the iceberg.
Valentina Pop
But we knew we were missing important points and some of the details didn’t add up. So we decided to lay it all out on a crime wall. You know, like in a detective show.
Eleni Varvitsioti
So we’re like, let’s do a board. Let’s put the names and the connections so we can have it visually.
Persis Love
How many faces are [inaudible]?
Eleni Varvitsioti
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, I think 19 or 20 people. Yeah.
Valentina Pop
And everything on our wall pointed to this one man in the middle, Pier Antonio Panzeri, the Ocean’s Eleven guy.
Eleni Varvitsioti
We have Pier Antonio Panzeri described as il capo with a question mark.
Persis Love
What’s il capo?
Eleni Varvitsioti
Il capo is like the . . .
Persis Love
The kingpin?
Eleni Varvitsioti
Yeah, exactly.
Valentina Pop
Belgian intelligence had wiretapped Panzeri, and they had loads of recordings of Panzeri talking to his family and associates about gifts, trips and payments from Qatar. We put those on the wall, too.
Eleni Varvitsioti
For example, here, the wife and daughter of Panzeri, they went on a trip to Doha on November 2022. They did a holiday paid by Qatar worth of 100,000. In their home there was 17,000 cash and luxury watches.
Valentina Pop
We knew a little about Panzeri, that he’d worked in parliament for nearly 20 years, that he was from Milan and only spoke Italian. But we wanted to know why it was him at the centre of our wall. What made him so special? We tried to talk to Panzeri and his lawyers, but they declined to comment. So while Eleni and I kept building our crime wall, Silvia, our FT correspondent in Milan, tried to figure out who Panzeri really was.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
One person described him as unscrupulous. One other person said he was greedy. Apparently, it was no secret in his Brussels circles that he would go on these very lavish trips.
Valentina Pop
Some people told Silvia that Panzeri had developed a bit of a dodgy reputation in Brussels over the years. He’d been elected back in 2004 to represent the Italian social democrats in the European parliament. He was a former trade union boss and on the parliament floor he was always an advocate for the workers.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
Actually, if you listen to his speeches — and of course he didn’t speak English, so most of these will be in Italian — but his delivery was always powerful and he always really stressed the importance of equality, equal rights, workers’ rights and giving back to those who were less well-off.
[PANZERI VOICE CLIP IN ITALIAN]
Valentina Pop
Panzeri worked in the parliament long enough that young politicians looked up to him. He was someone people would go to for political advice.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
They knew he really had a wealth of expertise in the space of human rights.
Valentina Pop
Even though at times those who worked with Panzeri said he had no boundaries and his reputation was that of a rather intense boss.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
He was known to get bored when he was back in Italy and call his contacts in Brussels repeatedly. He was rumoured to be anxious and obsessive, and he always had this young assistant by his side, an Italian man named Francesco Giorgi. You might remember Francesco’s name from last episode. Francesco is Eva Kaili’s partner. People told Silvia that Francesco was attached to Panzeri’s hip.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
Giorgi began working for him in his early 20s and the professional relationship continued for years and years.
Valentina Pop
Panzeri only spoke Italian, which is a handicap in Brussels, so Panzeri completely depended on Francesco, who spoke multiple languages and would translate everything for Panzeri. And it seemed like Francesco saw Panzeri as some sort of a mentor.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
I think it’s fair to say that he was a fatherly figure to him for many, many years.
Valentina Pop
Eva says she saw this dynamic first-hand.
Eva Kaili
All his assistants and the people close to him were very, I’d say, always willing to help him. And I remember this was something also a bit frustrating because he would ask them to help him with his house, with his, if he had a doctor’s appointment to translate for him. But also after he stopped working at the parliament.
Valentina Pop
Throughout his career, Panzeri built a reputation as a specialist on human rights in the Middle East, and in his last term in office he was the head of the parliament’s human rights subcommittee.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
And from what we know, that’s when he started building relations with the likes of Qatar and Morocco.
Valentina Pop
Towards the end of his term in office, Panzeri did something that in hindsight is significant. In 2018, he signed the co-operation agreement with a man named Ali bin Samikh al-Marri, who was the president of the Qatari Human Rights Committee. This was the first time that Panzeri and al-Marri made their relationship official. At the time, al-Marri was Panzeri’s counterpart. He was supposed to be the watchdog for labour rights in Qatar. But looking back, it seems like this was all about Qatar wanting to improve its image ahead of the 2022 games. Panzeri lost his re-election campaign in 2019, and that’s when he set up an NGO in Brussels called Fight Impunity. And knowing what Panzeri did next, this name is ironic, to say the least.
[PANZERI VOICE CLIP IN ITALIAN]
Valentina Pop
On Fight Impunity’s YouTube channel, Panzeri explained that the organisation was trying to achieve its goals through international collaboration.
[PANZERI VOICE CLIP IN ITALIAN]
Valentina Pop
So at this point Panzeri was out of parliament but still had a lot of contacts there. And he also kept his former staffer Francesco, by his side.
Silvia Sciorilli Borelli
Even after Panzeri left the European parliament and Giorgi went on to work for another MEP as parliamentary assistant, they obviously maintained a very close relationship and Panzeri’s influence remained extremely strong over Giorgi.
Valentina Pop
Francesco was named as senior adviser for Fight Impunity and by late 2019 they were in business. On the one hand, Fight Impunity did write up reports and held conferences, the kind of things you’d expect from a non-profit in this field. But there was another side of it, too, a side that stayed out of the public eye. It turns out that side operated much more like a PR agency for countries in the Middle East. Panzeri was making deals with countries that had floundering reputations, promising to clean up their image in exchange for cash. And one of Fight Impunity’s clients was Qatar. We’ll be back after the break.
Persis Love
So where are we?
Andy Bounds
So we’re outside (names Italian restaurant), probably Laura’s got better pronunciation.
Laura Dubois
(names Italian restaurant), Italian restaurant.
Andy Bounds
Which is just across the road from where Panzeri lives.
Valentina Pop
Our FT Brussels correspondents, Laura and Andy, are standing outside an Italian restaurant with our audio producer, Persis. It’s on a quiet street corner in a residential neighbourhood, well away from the hustle and bustle of the European parliament, just far enough away that it’s not likely you’d be seen by any colleagues. This restaurant was a regular haunt of Panzeri’s.
Andy Bounds
There’s quite a few Italian restaurants in Brussels but this was his favourite.
Persis Love
And we’re gonna go for lunch?
Andy Bounds
We’re gonna go for lunch, yeah.
Valentina Pop
But they’re not just here to have a bite. They’re here because an important meeting took place at this restaurant, a meeting where you can see how Panzeri operated. They pick a table at the back of the restaurant, hoping it will be quieter. But it’s a pretty loud place. They’re wondering, is this a brilliant place for a business meeting or a terrible one?
Andy Bounds
I guess the conversation was noisy enough that he would assume nobody was listening.
Valentina Pop
It’s here in this Italian restaurant that we can start to imagine an evening back in May of 2022. Panzeri’s at the table with Francesco, his assistant. Also at the table is al-Marri, Panzeri’s contact who by that time was the labour minister of Qatar.
[RESTAURANT NOISE]
Valentina Pop
We can imagine they put in their dinner order, maybe some antipasti, and then they go down to business. They talk about al-Marri donating €200,000 to go towards Luca Visentini’s election campaign.
Andy Bounds
Luca Visentini’s election campaign to become the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.
Valentina Pop
They are discussing how to make sure that the trade union boss favourable to Qatar gets elected. And then they move on to the European parliament. Its human rights subcommittee needs to start saying nice things about Qatar and its labour conditions.
Andy Bounds
Al-Marri says he’s already been at the Foreign Relations Committee. You obviously want to see the Human Rights Committee as well. I think it’s part of setting up that meeting.
Valentina Pop
Panzeri reassures al-Marri that his connections in the European parliament will deliver, especially the person who took over Panzeri’s old job. It’s a woman named Marie Arena.
Andy Bounds
And also they discussed Marie Arena’s role, and it’s a bit unclear.
Valentina Pop
What we do know is that at this dinner, Francesco and Panzeri say no problem, we’ll convince Arena.
Laura Dubois
Panzeri promises to guide Arena on Qatar statements.
Valentina Pop
OK, so you can really start to see now how Panzeri worked. Essentially, he was telling Qatar that he could make things happen for them through his NGO Fight Impunity, that he could get members of parliament to do favours for them. But these favours weren’t for free. The Qataris needed to pay up.
Andy Bounds
Yeah, it’s interesting that they discussed amounts of money.
Valentina Pop
As the dinner continues, they talk specifics, the amount of money that will be distributed to other lawmakers who will be supportive of Qatar.
Andy Bounds
But we don’t get a total bill because Giorgi’s going to work that out and give it to al-Marri the next morning. This is how it gets done.
Valentina Pop
Francesco, Eva’s partner, is the one who figures out how much cash needs to go where and for what.
Andy Bounds
I don’t know, say very much a business meeting.
Persis Love
Very much a business meeting.
Andy Bounds
That’s quite strange, strange business.
Valentina Pop
A strange business meeting and one that was being listened to by the Belgian intelligence officers. Remember, they’d been tracking Panzeri’s every move. They bugged his house, wiretapped his phone. They were following him everywhere. They followed him right into this Italian restaurant. They were maybe even sitting at a table beside him, spying on him. And it’s pretty clear that Panzeri had no idea, because by the time they pay and leave, Belgian intelligence is pretty confident they have solid proof that something is going on here.
[RESTAURANT NOISE]
Valentina Pop
Panzeri and Francesco meet after dinner to decide how much money they’ll need from Qatar to carry out this plot they just hatched. Francesco will present their proposal to al-Marri the next day. The next time al-Marri is in town in October, Belgian intelligence catch a glimpse of Panzeri and Francesco walking into his hotel. Francesco is pushing a stroller with his and Eva’s child in it, and Panzeri and Francesco also have a bunch of bags with them. The bags look empty. It’s another business meeting and we don’t know what was said. But we do know what Belgian intelligence sees: Francesco and Panzeri going to al-Marri’s hotel suite with empty bags and come out with them full.
Over the years, stacks of cash show up at Francesco and Eva’s apartment in Brussels. The amount stored at their place by Panzeri was more than €800,000. And Panzeri’s cash starts turning up in other people’s homes too. By December of 2022, Fight Impunity’s business was booming. Panzeri had money stashed throughout Brussels and the Belgian wiretaps were buzzing with new information. We printed them out and my colleagues Andy and Laura sat down to read through them.
Andy Bounds
Panzeri instructs Arena on this trip in regards to workers’ rights.
Valentina Pop
There are conversations between Panzeri and Arena, who was heading the human rights subcommittee at the time, where he tells her how important it is for her to stay in that job for reasons they both know.
Andy Bounds
So, the 2nd of August 2022, Panzeri meets Arena at Salvarino restaurant in Brussels, pizza place. Panzeri tells her don’t take yourself out of the game. And anyway, you have the parachute. It exists, and I’m interested in it too, because if you’re in the game, me too. I will gather more money.
Laura Dubois
Arena replies, you will have to explain to me where you’re getting the money from.
Andy Bounds
Panzeri replies, totally. Panzeri yes, now go on holiday. Then you have to place yourself in this perspective because there is money. I would like to increase it because I think you’re strong on certain things.
Valentina Pop
In these transcripts it seems clear that Arena is Panzeri’s main contact in parliament. In one phone call, you can hear Panzeri talk about what went down when he and Arena travelled to Qatar together. This trip was right before that dinner with al-Marri, in which Panzeri and Francesco say we’ll deal with Arena. And in the following days they proceed with helping Arena craft that statement about how great Qatar was doing on human rights.
Laura Dubois
And Panzeri promises to guide Arena on Qatar statements. Al-Marri asks when is Marie going to . . .
Valentina Pop
Marie Arena did end up publishing a statement praising Qatar’s progress. Al-Marri loved the statement, and it was printed as part of a promotional packet that Qatar handed out to media covering the World Cup. After his trip to Doha, Panzeri also tells Francesco how much money they’re about to receive from Qatar. When Francesco asks, how much did they give you? Panzeri responds, six. Holy cow, Francesco says. And it seemed like the plan that Panzeri and al-Marri hatched over an Italian dinner worked. Luca Visentini was elected in November, literally a day after the World Cup opening. Everything the Belgian intelligence gathered, all of these scenes detailed how Panzeri operated. Panzeri straddled multiple worlds, the European parliament, international trade unions and human rights groups, all based in Brussels. That’s why he was the perfect fixer for Qatar.
Eleni Varvitsioti
Let me take it off and then we will glue it back together.
Valentina Pop
Everything and everyone were starting to connect on our crime wall. There were arrows pointing in every direction — Al-Marri, the Qatari paymaster, Visentini, the trade union boss, the members of parliament on Panzeri’s payroll, Arena, Eva and Francesco, Panzeri’s bag boy.
Eleni Varvitsioti
We have all these suspects, Eva Kaili, the father, Giorgi, the cash that was found. We have that . . .
Valentina Pop
But then there was a twist. News came out about il capo. A few weeks after he was arrested, Panzeri signed a plea deal in exchange for Belgian dropping charges against his wife and daughter and a lighter sentence for himself, he gave them names. At first he named predictable names. Some of the names we had on our crime wall, including Marie Arena. But then he changed his plea and removed his mention of Arena, erased her in his confession, and in her place he wrote another name, Eva Kaili.
Eleni Varvitsioti
So when we met in Brussels, you told me this was a witch hunt. What do you think went wrong?
Eva Kaili
I think at this point they care for just their truth, not the truth.
Valentina Pop
That’s next week on Power for Sale. Power for Sale is season two of Untold, a Financial Times investigative podcast. It is produced with Goat Rodeo. The series’ lead producers are Rebecca Seidel and Persis Love. Reporting by me, Valentina Pop, Laura Dubois, Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli, Eleni Varvitsioti and Andy Bounds. Writing by me, Megan Nadolski and Rebecca Seidel. Story editing from Ian Enright, Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley. Executive producers for the Financial Times are Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley. Executive producers for Goat Rodeo are Ian Enright and Megan Nadolski. Mixing, editing and sound design by Rebecca Seidel. Editorial and production assistance from Alex Barker, Judith Evans, Isabelle Kerby-McGowan, Joshua Gabert-Doyon, Andrew Georgiades, Tamara Kormornick, Mischa Frankl-Duval, Edwin Lane, Guglielmo Soriente and Laura Clarke. If you want to share a tip in relation to this podcast, please get in touch at valentina.pop@ft.com. Thank you to the many sources who shared their stories with us for this series and thanks for listening.
