Belgian police have searched the European parliament office and Brussels home of a parliamentary staffer who is believed to have played “a significant role” in a Russian interference operation, the national prosecutor has said.
French authorities also carried out a search of the employee’s European parliament office in Strasbourg at the request of the Belgian examining magistrate overseeing the inquiry into corruption and Russian interference.
The case is part of a Belgian investigation announced last month into alleged payments to MEPs to promote Russian propaganda on the Voice of Europe website. The searches come just over a week before elections to the European parliament.
After a Czech investigation into the Prague-based website, Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said last month a pro-Russian interference network was active in several European countries, including Belgium. The objective, he added, was to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European parliament in next week’s elections and reinforce “a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution”.
In a statement on Wednesday, Belgium’s federal public prosecutor’s office said the searches were part of “a case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organisation and relates to indications of Russian interference”.
A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office declined to name the suspect, citing the standard practice of secrecy.
Citing sources close to the inquiry, Belgian media named the suspect as Guillaume Pradoura, who they said was the former assistant of Maximilian Krah, the lead candidate for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party who recently resigned from the far-right party’s leadership over comments about the SS.
