Georges Gilkinet, the Belgian MP from the Green Party (Ecolo) and the “star” of the so-called Kazakhgate commission, is a man of unpalatable convictions. In late 2009, for instance, he drafted a law that would have forced the banks to publish each year the names of their clients. He didn’t care that such a law,… Continue reading
Open source investigations
Despite early efforts, the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission can no longer ignore the obvious: According to its president, Dirk Van der Maelen, the Commission concluded that the settlement law was drafted by the diamond lobby for the benefit of the diamond dealers involved in fraud investigations. However this conclusion was not based on the testimonies of… Continue reading
Members of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission were shocked to find out on 19 April 2017 that the academic expert who supported the settlement bill in the Senate was on the diamond lobby’s payroll. OSI can now reveal that while pushing for the enlargement of the criminal settlement, Raf Verstraeten (photo) was not only the lawyer of… Continue reading
It has taken Belgian Parliamentary Inquiry Commission four months to discover the obvious: the enlargement of the criminal settlement law was drafted by the Antwerp diamond lobby in 2009. On 10 April 2017, Dirk Van der Maelen, the president of the commission, bragged in an interview: “We have now discovered in the inquiry that the Verherstraeten… Continue reading
