On Monday, February 3rd, Belgian police arrested 34-year-old Ugo Lemaire, the son of former socialist MEP and Qatargate suspect Marie Arena (S&D), for international drug trafficking. Although the case is not directly related to Qatargate, Lemaire may never have been caught if it had not been for the European Parliament’s giant corruption scandal, which also revealed multiple conflicts of interest involving the family.
Lemaire’s Brussels residence was first raided by the police in July 2023 as part of the Qatargate investigation into Arena. From his apartment, the Belgian anti-corruption authorities seized close to €300,000 in cash, several GPS trackers and other electronics, and three cars registered in different countries: Belgium, Spain, and Bulgaria. It has now been revealed that he was using these vehicles to transport marijuana between these countries.
Qatargate broke in late 2022 when Belgian police conducted 20 raids across Brussels as part of a criminal investigation they had covertly opened months before. They seized €1.5 million in cash and arrested half a dozen politicians—including prime suspects MEP Eva Kaili and former MEP Antonio Panzeri, S&D members from Greece and Italy—for accepting Qatari bribes in exchange for influencing voting in the EU Parliament in favor of the oil-rich Gulf country.
Since then, the number of suspects directly linked to Qatargate climbed to around 15 with three additional arrests last month, nearly all of whom worked for the socialist S&D group. Arena was also charged last month for playing a central role in the scandal, described by police reports as “collecting” the money from Qatari officials and disbursing it between the members of the “criminal organization.”
Arena was accused of having conflicts of interest involving her son even before she was first linked to Qatargate. Lemaire co-founded and ran a company called BRC&Co that specialized in CBD products, a weaker cannabis extract that is legal in most, but not all, EU countries, albeit with different legal thresholds.
In June 2023, a month before the Qatargate investigation into Arena began, the MEP—who was also the chair of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee—hosted “the first major cannabis event” in the EU Parliament to lobby legalization. Although she defended the event by saying it promoted medical marijuana and not CBD, her internal emails to colleagues revealed her aim was pushing for more lenient EU legislation on all marijuana products.
“Currently the levels of CBD and THC levels in cannabis products allowed across Europe differ starkly,” Arena wrote in a letter to all MEPs. “An effort to standardize legislation across the board would in turn help to tackle other elements which are linked together to this issue.” And that’s not all. In a ‘plot twist’ just a few days later, it was also revealed that BRC&Co’s other co-founder was none other than the son of Michel Claise, the chief judge leading the Qatargate investigation. Claise resigned from the case shortly after, which might have opened the door for the raids against Arena—including into Lemaire’s home—and their subsequent arrests.
