EU SCANDAL SUSPECT TO REMAIN JAILED

A former European Parliament vice president suspected of being at the center of one of the European Union’s biggest corruption scandals is to be kept in prison for at least another month, Belgian prosecutors said Thursday.

The prosecutors accuse Eva Kaili of corruption, membership in a criminal organization and money laundering. She has been in custody since Dec. 9. Her partner, Francesco Giorgi, an adviser at the European Parliament, is jailed on the same charges.

The two are suspected of working with Giorgi’s onetime boss, Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former EU lawmaker. According to arrest warrants, Panzeri “is suspected of intervening politically with members working at the European Parliament for the benefit of Qatar and Morocco, against payment.”

Kaili’s lawyers had said that she posed no flight risk and requested in a Brussels court that she be released under surveillance by wearing an electronic police tracking device.

But prosecutors said in a statement that the court has “prolonged the preventative detention by one month.”