Last week, a total of 14 members were banned from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for life after it transpired that they had been receiving bribes and gifts from the Azerbaijani government. One of those members was MP Zmago Jelinčič.
Jelinčič, who was recently appointment as the temporary vice chair of the parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee, attempted to clarify that he had not been expelled from the Council of Europe, but he failed to answer some key questions in his attempt to do so. He dismissed reports of his expulsion from the Council of Europe as a “leftist media campaign”, and tried to prove that he has not been expelled from the Council of Europe by pointing to a document published several months ago.
“I’ve never been expelled from the Council of Europe and I haven’t been notified of my expulsion either. The Council of Europe just said that I failed to send them a written statement. But they never asked me to send them one,” said Jelinčič, adding that perhaps the Council of Europe did send Parliament a request for the submission of a written statement. But he stressed that he never received it because he did not serve as a Member of Parliament between 2011 and 2018.
However, on 29 June the Council of Europe published a report on its website saying that Jelinčič “had received EUR 25,000 in July 2012 from one of the UK companies involved in the “Laundromat” case therefore creating the suspicion that he acted in favour of Azerbaijan on the occasion of election observations”.
The report, moreover, says that Jelinčič “failed to comply with the Investigation Body’s requests for the submission of a written statement. Mr Jelinčič Plemeniti did not reply to the letter sent by the Committee chairperson and did not provide any comments.” The Committee on Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs of the Council of Europe found that since “there has been a serious violation of the ethical rules of the Parliamentary Assembly; it decided that Mr Jelinčič Plemeniti shall be deprived of the right to access to the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly premises for life”.