Justice has opened an investigation for “influence traffic” against the Belgian bank. Auditions are underway and senior officials targeted. Did the former Minister of Finance took advantage of his function to put pressure and generate decisions that were favorable to him?
It is a thunderclap in the sky of the start of the school year Belgian policy and financial. ING Belgium, reveals The evening This Wednesday morning, is in the collimator of justice for “influence traffic” in the Reynders case.
The former Deputy Prime Minister MR, long at the head of the Finance Department, is accused of money launderingin particular via the compulsive purchase of lottery tickets. He would also have deposited on his Ing account, from 2008 to 2018, nearly 700,000 euros of cash.
Didier Reynders denies in block. He justifies these movements by an addiction to games and, with regard to the amounts deposited, by Training of works of art. Searches have also taken place recently with an antique dealer from Sablon and with his old right arm, Jean-Claude Fontinoy.
But the case, now, Ing Belgium ricochet button.
The bank would have protected it
According to The eveninghis bank is suspected of having closed your eyes on the deposits in cash suspects of his illustrious customer. Or at least, to have failed to denounce the facts in time. Even, to have covered the questionable actions of the ex-president of the MR, who could have used his influence within the bank.
Hence an investigation by the Brussels prosecutor’s office for Potential facts of “influence traffic”.
Fifteen bank officials Walking since July in the offices of the Central Office for the Repression of Corruption (OCRC) to answer for these suspicions. According to these revelations, the former and current CEO of ING Belgium, Erik Van Den Heyden and Peter Adams, received a summons to be heard in the context of this file.
It is an understatement to say that Ing Belgium is embarrassed By this information, saying that it cannot express themselves on this particular file. She is content to recall that she plays “fully her role as guardian of the financial system and respects all legal obligations in the fight against money laundering”.
How far can it go?
The question is obviously to know if Didier Reynders would have, in this case, pissed On the bank where it would have given her favors so that she closes her eyes.
The suspicion is now wider. “Reynders protected by his bank? What surprise!, Exclaims, for example, Jean-François Tamellini, secretary general of the FGTB Walloon. On the other hand, nobody makes any connection between the suspicions of money laundering on a personal basis and the fact that the same Reynders is at the base of the famous DLUs allowing Belgian tax fraudsters to whiten their stoves abroad?”
In other words, would the personal situation of the former member of the MR have weighed on political decisions?
This undermined file, as we can see, could be far from having revealed all its dimensions.