By Charlotte Van Campenhout and Marine Strauss
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Former EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders is under investigation by Belgian authorities for alleged money laundering, the spokesperson for the Brussels public prosecutor general said on Thursday.
Belgian authorities started investigating in 2023 after complaints from both the Belgian National Lottery and the Belgian Financial Intelligence processing Unit (CFI), spokesperson An Schoonjans said.
Reynders could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Belgian National Lottery said in a statement it had notified Belgian authorities in 2022 about suspicious activity, without giving any further details. The CFI was not immediately available for comment.
The prosecutor general’s office declined to give details of how much money was involved in the investigation or when the complaints related to.
Reynders, a Belgian national, served as Belgium’s finance minister and later as foreign minister from 1999 to 2019.
He held the position of EU Commissioner for Justice under the previous European Commission led by President Ursula von der Leyen, from 2019 to last month.
The investigation was first reported on Monday by Belgian daily Le Soir and Follow the Money, a Dutch investigative news website.
EU spokesperson Balazs Ujvari told reporters on Tuesday that Belgian authorities had not contacted the EU in relation to the investigation while Reynders was in office.
He said commissioners enjoyed some limited protection from legal investigations for actions taken in their official capacity. Ujvari said former commissioners retained this immunity, and any decision to lift it would require approval from the 27 current commissioners.
(Reporting by Marine Strauss, Charlotte Van Campenhout, additional reporting by Phil Blenkinsop; Editing by Alison Williams)
