The Polish conservative weekly Gazeta Polska has called for an investigation into the activities of Abderrahim Atmoun, Morocco’s ambassador to Poland. According to the magazine, the Moroccan diplomat, who has been ambassador to Poland since 2019, was illegally lobbying Polish senators for recognition of the territory of Western Sahara as part of Morocco.
Gazeta Polska journalist Piotr Nisztor told Polish public TV news channel TVP Info that Ambassador Atmoun has engaged in active lobbying of the Polish Senate, controlled by the liberal opposition, and its speaker Tomasz Grodzki.
As a result of these activities, a Polish-Moroccan committee was created under the chairmanship of Senator Joanna Sekuła. Despite Poland having had a clear stance on the Western Sahara conflict for years, Sekuła, in an official letter, supported the Moroccan position in the dispute.
A close associate of the senator happens to be a Moroccan living in Poland who leads an association headquartered in an empty warehouse on the outskirts of the city of Katowice in the Silesia region. Nisztof has called for the whole matter to be investigated by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW). He believes that anyone in the Senate who has had contact with the Moroccan ambassador should be questioned by the authorities.
Nisztor says that the scandal is not just one of corruption but also involves espionage. He finds it disturbing that a Moroccan diplomat in Warsaw seems to have been a key figure in the corruption scandal in the European Parliament.
The journalist of Gazeta Polska says that according to the Belgian investigators, the ambassador had worked with the Moroccan intelligence services to corrupt MEPs who sat on a committee investigating the Pegasus surveillance system.
It is alleged that Morocco used the Pegasus spyware to decode messages and snoop on European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron. According to Belgian investigators, some members of the European Parliament received bribes from Qatar and Morocco in order to further the interests of these two states.
