In the latest chapter of a slow-burning story, on January 18, 2025, Antonio Panzeri’s successor as head of the European Union’s Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI), Maria Arena, was charged with participating in a criminal organization concerning the Qatargate scandal. As far back as December 2022, shocking revelations had exposed collaboration between Panzeri, EU officials, and certain NGOs. This alliance turned their human rights advocacy into a self-serving commercial enterprise, yielding them €2.6 million and their clients favorable motions and resolutions in the European Parliament. The roles of Arena and Panzeri in commercializing their office by curating human rights targets and taking protective measures for monetary exchange warrant closer scrutiny.

After leaving DROI, Panzeri continued to operate behind the scenes, having “almost 400 telephone calls” in ten months with Arena. As reported by Politico, her ties to the NGOs Fight Impunity (FI) and No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) raised concerns about transparency and influence within DROI, especially as key figures from these NGOs faced corruption and money laundering charges in the EU’s Qatargate scandal. Arena’s leadership has also been criticized for allowing unbalanced hearings that favored Qatar’s interests while sidelining its critics.

The scope of corruption extends beyond Qatar, with both Morocco and Mauritania mentioned as attempting to influence European Parliament decisions through bribery. All three countries — Qatar, Morocco, and Mauritania — deny any involvement.

Germane to Central Asia, Maria Arena reportedly penned a letter to the Ambassador of Kazakhstan in Brussels calling for the release from prison of Karim Massimov, the former head of Kazakh intelligence who was sentenced to long-term imprisonment in his homeland for high treason, attempted coup and abuse of power. Journalists’ investigations have documented Massimov’s alleged links to major corruption, and he was closely associated with the authoritative regime of former President Nazarbayev.

Arena’s push coincides with social media postings on 8 November 2022 by FI and NPWJ calling for Massimov’s release. Francesco Giorgi, an ex-parliamentary staffer at Fight Impunity and Panzeri aide who admitted partial guilt in the Qatargate bribery scandal, retweeted the post.

A broader investigation suggests further malfeasance similar to Qatargate, in which Panzeri, Arena, and other EU officials collaborated with Mukhtar Ablyazov, a known criminal with judgments against him exceeding $4.8 billion dollars in the U.S. and British courts. Ablyazov is facing potential deportation from France following his evasion of a 22-month UK prison sentence for contempt of court.

Despite this high-profile conviction in the UK, under DROI’s leadership, a faction of European politicians, including prominent names from the S&D including Panzeri and Maria Arena, along with their legislative partner Renew Europe, continued to align themselves with Ablyazov.

An analysis of Ablyazov’s supporters in the European Parliament, PACE, and national legislatures reveals a discernible pattern. During his time in Strasbourg, Ablyazov met with Panzeri – a figure labeled by The Spectator as one of Ablyazov’s “most diligent lawyers and active supporters.” Alongside Ablyazov was his daughter, Madina, who is married to Ilyas Khrapunov – found by a federal judge in the U.S. to have created shell companies “for the sole purpose of laundering money.”

From left to right: Madina Ablyazova, Mukhtar Ablyazov, Lyudmila Kozlovska, and Antonio Panzeri

Signs of collusion between Panzeri and Ablyazov date back to 2016, when he spearheaded a motion on Kazakhstan in the European Parliament. This motion was adopted on March 10^th of that year. On the same day, during a plenary session, Panzeri denounced a “clampdown” on Ablyazov’s Moscow-based newspaper, Respublika, which coincided with a court case involving Respublika and the hacking and publishing of emails belonging to Ablyazov’s adversaries.

As the head of DROI, Panzeri was key in a 2019 study on the Misuse of Interpol’s Red Notices, which mentioned Ablyazov fourteen times. A month later, he chaired a European Parliament event featuring Bota Jardemalie, who served as Ablyazov’s “right hand” during the disappearance of $8 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank into a sprawling network of over 1,000 shell companies.

Like Panzeri, Arena shared an unusual sympathy for Ablyazov. In February 2020, Arena attended an event where she engaged with Jardemalie and Dana Zhanay alongside outspoken Ablyazov supporter, Anna Shukeyeva. Zhanay and Shukeyeva are under indictment for allegedly “distributing funds received” from Ablyazov.

These suspiciously coordinated actions were further highlighted when EU bodies either plagiarized from or used similar wording to an opaque NGO called the Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), which has lobbied for Ablyazov for over a decade. This advocacy, disproportionately focused on Kazakhstan, has influenced numerous European Parliament and PACE declarations which align with ODF and Ablyazov’s agendas.

Multiple PACE declarations and European Parliament motions have relied on the ODF for “evidence,” creating an echo chamber that reinforces the ODF’s narrative. Notably, an ODF report on Kazakhstan was copied into a resolution by the Renew Europe group, introduced shortly after the report’s release by MEPs Róża Thun and Petras Auštrevičius, who have both been strong ODF supporters. The resolution was adopted on January 20, 2022.

Perhaps unbeknownst to the MPs, the ODF’s leadership has financial ties to Russian-annexed Crimea and to sanctioned Russian entities through multiple family members.

Despite European Parliament President Roberta Metsola’s December 2022 acknowledgment that the parliament is “under attack [by] malign actors,” progress in countering this influence has remained limited. Despite being implicated in the Qatargate scandal, former MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella returned to the parliament until 2024 and were subsequently involved in voting on ethics changes. In July 2023, meanwhile, Niccolò Rinaldi, Head of Unit for relations with Central Asia at the time, was found to be “very close to the ODF and, above all, to Botagoz Jardemalie,” quoting her in his correspondence and calling Ablyazov’s Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) a “credible opposition party.” Yet Metsola dismissed these concerns, asserting that Rinaldi was “completely impartial.”

The abovementioned issues raise critical questions about the formulation of the EP’s 2022 resolution on Kazakhstan and the motives behind European officials advocating for a known international criminal and his associates. This concerning relationship has led to unsubstantiated allegations made by Ablyazov’s network finding their way into official documents as evidence.

More than fifteen years have passed since Ablyazov fled from the authorities in his homeland, and he continues to be embroiled in multiple transnational court cases. Since 2023, he has increasingly been using social media to ask for donations to pay his army of lawyers in his fight against extradition. A growing sense of desperation is evident in such posts as one dated November 27, 2024: “THERE IS NO MORE THAN A YEAR LEFT BEFORE RUSSIA ABSORBS KAZAKHSTAN, IF WE SLEEP AND DON’T OVERTHROW THIS REGIME! [SIC]” Ablyazov’s heightened desperation coincides with the rise of Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy as well as its adoption of democratic and human rights reforms and constitutional reforms, including limiting presidents to a single term in office, and its refusal to support Russia’s war in Ukraine or recognize “quasi-state territories… Lugansk and Donetsk.”

While Qatargate exposed how vulnerable European institutions are to corruption, the fight is far from over, and further measures are urgently needed to investigate European officials and prosecute wrongdoers. Otherwise, criminals can continue to capture the political elite and weaponize human rights to the detriment of the EU’s relationships with its strategic partners, including in Central Asia, at a time when Europe needs these partnerships more than ever.