Brexit champion Nigel Farage has responded to news of high-level corruption arrests in the European Parliament, suggesting they prove Britain made the right choice by breaking with the bloc.
“Major corruption alert in Brussels,” Farage said in a short video posted to social media after news of the arrests in the Belgian capital, which is also the European Union’s main centre of power, continued to develop on Sunday.
“Yes, a big police raid yesterday morning, 16 MEPs’ houses raided, five arrests, 600,000 euros found in sock drawers and it cupboards,” he claimed, perhaps embellishing the finer details.
“Belgian press say it’s Qatari money, it’s cash for lobbying — we don’t yet know the truth. What we do know is it’s a huge, massive scandal; what we do know is, because I was there for nearly 21 years, Brussels runs on a sea of total corruption,” said Farage, who was indeed a leading Member of the European Parliament as leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Brexit Party, now Reform UK, for decades.
Farage told viewers that the British have “got our problems” in Westminster, home to the Houses of Parliament, “it’s nothing like as bad [as] in Brussels, where the whole thing is endemic.”
“Thank God we’re out,” he added.
Farage also noted in a tweet accompanying the video that there had been “[v]ery little in UK media” — which has a tendency to declare Britain a European or global laughing stock when domestic scandals often of little interest to foreigners are reported — on the scandal, and vowed to do his part to keep the story in the public eye.
As of the time of publication, the central figure in the scandal is Eva Kaili, a Greek socialist who serves as a vice president in the European Parliament.
The President of the European Parliament, Malta’s Roberta Metsola, confirmed on Sunday that “all powers, duties and tasks” delegated to Kaili have now been suspended.