The incident was first reported by the Belgian daily Le Soir and the website Follow the Money. On Tuesday night, police searched two properties linked to the politician: his home in the upscale town of Uccle on the outskirts of Brussels and his villa in Visoul. Renders himself was to be questioned later that night.
Belgium. Police searched Didier Lenders' home
Belgium's former chief minister and former finance and foreign minister is suspected of laundering dirty money through the state lottery. Over almost a decade, the politician is said to have bought lottery tickets worth between €1 and €100 and transferred the value to his National Lottery account.
Lenders was in charge of the agency as finance minister but was not supervising it at the time the breach occurred. From his lottery account and for cash, he was supposed to participate in lottery games and transfer the winnings in the form of already laundered money to his personal account. According to media reports, it is not clear where the Belgian got the money and he now needs to prove its legal origin.
The act was reported by the National Lottery and the Belgian Financial Intelligence Service (CTIF-CFI), which collects information on transactions that may be related to money laundering and terrorist financing. As the Belgian Gambling Commission publishes on its website, this is a common method of laundering dirty money, even if the losses are initially greater than the profits.
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According to CTIF-CFI, Lenders' suspicious financial operations involving relatively large sums were carried out over a long period of time and began while the Belgian was active in national politics.
According to Belgian media, prosecutors opened an investigation against the former chief in 2023, but the investigation was carried out in secret and the case file was only released to police on Tuesday.
The investigation has been going on for months.
Prosecutors waited to raid the politician's home until after the ex-European Commissioner's term and the immunity period protecting Mr. Lenders had expired. This happened last Saturday and the new EC was launched on Sunday. Otherwise, consent to the procedure would have to be given by the Commission and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, putting the confidentiality of the investigation at risk.
The media has speculated that the incident may mean the end of Reynders' political career. For many years, Belgians were recognized as heavy-handed politicians. He served as Minister of Finance from 1999 to 2011, Minister of Foreign Affairs until 2019, and served as Member of the Legal Affairs Committee at the last European Commission.
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Lenders' political party, the Religious Reform Movement (MR), did not nominate him for a second term, and stakeholders themselves were disappointed in the decision. According to Follow the Money, Reinders and his longtime adviser Jean-Claude Fontinois have been repeatedly accused of corruption and bribery in the past. However, there was no clear evidence against the “Teflon Didier”, as the politician is sometimes called in Belgium.
As a former minister, Mr. Lenders is still entitled to certain protections. If the investigating judge wants to arrest him or bring a case against him, he will need the consent of the Belgian parliament.
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