The Moroccan prime minister is suing José Bové, a former member of the European Parliament, for defamation after Bové accused him of attempting to bribe him into supporting a free trade agreement when he was a trade rapporteur for the EU between 2009 and 2014. Bové, a French farmer, labor activist and politician, made the revelations on live radio last week.

José Bové: “The minister of agriculture could not bear the fact that I was opposed to this project, and he proposed to send a gift to me in Montpellier, in a cafe that would be discrete, and that we should meet between Christmas and New Year’s Day.”

Interviewer: “Was it money, José Bové, that he was offering?”

José Bové: “Well, what else do you think it was? It wasn’t a teapot to drink tea.”

Bové has opposed trade deals with Morocco that include products from Western Sahara, which Morocco has occupied since 1975. This comes amid a growing corruption scandal in the European Parliament, where multiple lawmakers are accused of accepting bribes from the governments of Morocco and Qatar. Click here to see our coverage of that story.