Manfred Weber, the president of the European Parliament’s largest political group, the European People’s Party (EPP) is caught in the midst of a growing corruption scandal after it was recently revealed that there is an ongoing corruption probe against several of his closest advisors, including—as revealed to The European Conservative—chief-of-staff-turned-secretary-general Ouarda Bensouag and high-ranking policy advisor Udo Zolleis.
But the story is much larger than just a few alleged irregular payments from EU taxpayer funds, and is also about how Weber has been operating for years, inside sources from the EPP close to the ongoing investigation told The European Conservative.
According to three (current and former) employees, granted anonymity to speak freely after contacting us, Weber has been placing his own people in key positions and awarding loyalty with questionable contracts, which in turn helps him gradually take over the party while silencing any critical voices around him. Many staffers are deeply dissatisfied with his management style but are too afraid of losing their jobs and careers to speak out, one of our sources told us.
The original story, broken last week by the Spanish daily La Gaceta, revealed that the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), along with Belgian authorities, was allegedly investigating three suspects from within Weber’s closest circle for misappropriation of EU funds. In a subsequent article by Politico, EPPO confirmed the existence of the case but refused to share details of ongoing investigations.
Politico claimed to have seen Belgian police documents that discussed criminal allegations including “forgery of a public document,” “forgery of public documents by a civil servant in the performance of duties,” “breach of trust,” “fraud,” and “public corruption.” The paper also said there were three suspects, including “two high-ranking ones,” but did not reveal any of their names.
A source close to the investigation told us that the probe was actually initiated by OLAF, the EU’s Anti-Fraud Office, based on a complaint from another EPP employee. OLAF then shared its preliminary findings with the EPPO and the Belgian anti-fraud investigators who picked up the case.
We contacted the Belgian federal police asking about the documents Politico obtained but were told that all information regarding active investigations is classified. Although the police would not confirm this, it’s likely that someone leaked those documents to Politico. For further questions, we were pointed to Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office, which also refused to share details, saying that the investigation was led by EPPO and not them.
According to La Gaceta, the three Weber aides were receiving salaries from both the EPP group (as a Parliament employee) and the EPP party for three months during the 2019 EU election campaign period, which is forbidden under EU rules. If a parliamentary employee wants to take on any other job, they first need to take temporary leave from the Parliament. The accused allegedly not only worked in different functions for the EPP party while remaining employed by the group, but were also paid by both simultaneously.
Contrary to La Gaceta’s report, our sources clarified that, as far as they know, the aides did not retain their parliamentary group salaries while working for the party, but rather kept only their “benefits and allowances” from the EU Parliament while also getting a full salary from the EPP party. This is still against the rules and fully warrants the ongoing probe.
Weber is also being paid from both sides, €8,000 a month as chairman of the EPP group and €14,000 as president of the Party. That’s according to official figures, and doesn’t include the numerous benefits and bonuses MEPs get. Taking a double salary is not a crime in his case, but it has been a source of conflict within the EPP for years.
Of the three suspects, La Gaceta revealed only one of their names: Ouarda Bensouag, Weber’s chief of staff, who, as of November 1st, is the EPP’s new Secretary-General, the highest position after Weber’s.
Our sources, three staffers from both the EPP group and the EPP party, confirmed Bensouag is one of the accused and told us that the other two under investigation are Udo Zolleis, a chief advisor and head of the EPP group’s Strategy Unit; and Weber’s personal social media manager.
We contacted the people named by our sources, asking them to confirm or deny this information. In response, we received an answer from EPP group press officer Pedro Lopez, who said that neither of the two had active work contracts with the group during the 2019 EU election campaign period. According to him, Zolleis suspended his employment with the Parliament (the EPP group) between January and May 2019, while the social media manager was hired only in October 2020, after the period under investigation.
In addition, Lopez pointed again to the EPP’s press release from Wednesday, in which the group denies the existence of the entire investigation, or at least having any knowledge of it. “We have not been approached by the EPPO, or by the Belgian authorities, or indeed by any other law enforcement agency, about any possible investigation of any kind.”
However, according to our sources, including one in contact with the Belgian investigative authorities, this is not the case. They insist there is an active probe into some top aides’ finances from the time, that several EPP employees had already been questioned and even more will be this week, and that “everyone within the EPP knows” it’s about Bensouag and Zolleis.
“This is all over EPP group chats right now,” one of them said, adding that they personally know and have talked to at least seven high-level party officials who are certain that Bensouag and Zolleis are two of the three subjects of the investigation.
Now, according to them, Weber’s circle is in desperate damage control mode because of the importance of the two people involved. As one staffer explained:
Bensouag and Zolleis are Weber’s right and left hands. Both are extremely powerful and among the most influential members of the EPP in the Parliament, thanks to Weber. They have a say in everything, from personnel shuffling to political strategy.
According to the sources, Weber’s “takeover” of EPP began after his failed bid to become EU Commission chief in 2019. He allegedly began replacing long-time staffers in key positions of power with his own people, often without them having prior experience in the field they were given, and at the expense of others who had been much more qualified.
In 2022, for instance, five senior employees were fired at once, including two deputy secretaries-general, simply because Weber would rather have his own people installed in their positions and their only sin was not belonging to his camp of loyalists, we were told.
“Nominating his own head of cabinet as the Secretary-General should be unacceptable,” another said, referring to Bensouag’s fresh promotion. Others in EPP feel the same way about it but are too afraid to speak out. Employees who are openly critical of Weber usually don’t stay for long and antagonizing him or his closest aides can cost you your entire career in the EU bubble.
As one source explained:
The point is that Weber has extreme power, and even though he’s preaching about EU values and lecturing others left and right, he’s managing the group as a dictator.
Instead of the European People’s Party, it should be called Weber’s People’s Party.
It’s not just the shady personnel reshuffles and autocratic leadership style that many employees complain about. Weber is also prone to “bending the rules,” another source said. “It’s no coincidence that since he took charge of the EPP, one scandal follows the other.”
They pointed at previous instances, such as the case of Mario Voigt, a CDU lawmaker from Germany and EPP’s digital campaign advisor in 2019. In April this year, German and Belgian police raided the EPP’s Brussels headquarters in search of documents that would prove that Voigt illegally received money from a firm in his home state, Thuringia, in exchange for a very lucrative contract with the EPP.
Another case involved at least three Greek ‘communications consultants,’ former campaign advisors of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who were mysteriously awarded contracts for up to €4-500,000 each for just a few months of work by the EPP—all from EU taxpayer funds.
According to our sources, these consultants appeared right after Mitsotakis’ former right hand, Thanasis Bakolas, became the secretary-general of EPP in 2022—without much experience, but with the backing of Weber.
Then, they abruptly disappeared in February 2023, and—the story goes—the Parliament found out about it and quietly “forced” the EPP to terminate their contracts before the irregularities became too striking to ignore and become public. One can only hope that someone did initiate an internal probe that’s still ongoing, and maybe this scandal will also break later, a source added.
Ironically, Bakolas is now one of the loudest critics of Weber’s ongoing power grab through personnel changes. Their conflict, described by Politico as “a civil war at the very top” of EPP, would have likely ended with Weber’s total dominance of the party by next spring’s congress in Valencia, but this recent scandal involving two of his top people might complicate things.
Now, the point of the story is not about a few months’ of double salaries or Weber’s autocratic leadership style—one we’ve known and the other is not an isolated case in the European Parliament—our sources agreed.
The point is that this probe is looking into two of the highest-level officials of the European Parliament’s largest group, whose position and power is directly linked to Weber’s. If they go down, there’s no telling of what else could be unraveled or who else could be implicated.
