In Belgium, a minister proposes to consider traffickers as self -employed to contribute

The Belgian Minister of Independents, Éléonore Simonet, intends to tackle the portfolio of drug traffickers by automatically enrolling them to the regime of self -employed workers when he is the subject of a conviction or a report of offense.

“Strong criminals where it hurts : at the portfolio. “ This is the idea formulated on Monday, June 30, by the federal minister of the middle classes, the self -employed and SMEs in Belgium. Éléonore Simonet proposes that drug traffickers participate in the country’s economic life by paying social contributions.

According to her, anyone who generates income from criminal activities, such as a drug dealer, should pay social contributions and pay taxes but should also lose their rights to allowances such as unemployment. It’s necessary “Concrete financial consequences for people carrying out illegal activities”pleads the minister.

Éléonore Simonet wants a drug trafficker who is the subject of an offense report or a conviction be automatically registered with Inasti, the institute which manages the social insurance of the self-employed. “The idea is that PV, police findings, drug trafficking judgments are transmitted to Inasti to affiliate these traffickers to the social status of self -employedshe specifies with RTL Info. Not at all to legitimize their criminal activity or legalize it but [pour] Arrive in addition to justice and the police and impose financial sanctions for them. ” Concretely, once registered with the Inasti, the convicted person should, if necessary, pay a backwards of social contributions, any taxes, as well as reimburse the undue social assistance. And this affiliation may even be retroactive up to 5 years, assures the minister.

Éléonore Simonet also intends to deprive traffickers from their benefits. “[L’idée] is to transmit this information to payment organizations so that they block the tap and that we stop paying unemployment benefits, social housing to people who do not play the game, who carry out criminal activities here in Belgium “she continues.

If it is still necessary to examine how to organize and perpetuate the transmission of information from the police and justice to the Inasti, the measure could be implemented quickly because it does not require modifying the law, explains the cabinet of the minister. Indeed, the royal decree of 1967 organizing the social status of the self -employed does not specify that an independent activity must be legal.

The initiative is well received by the National Drugs Commissariat that salutes “measures [qui] Also have a preventive aspect and break the myth that a criminal career is easy money. ” Belgium is considered a hub for drug trafficking, and in particular cocaine, in Europe via the port of Antwerp. The fight against organized crime is therefore a priority of the Belgian government, but the unions of police and magistrates regularly denounce the lack of means.