Former EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders investigated for money laundering

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A former EU commissioner and political heavyweight in Belgium is being investigated on suspicion of money laundering involving lottery tickets.

Didier Reynders’s properties were searched and he was questioned by police on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson for the general prosecutor in Brussels.

“The criminal investigation follows reports from the National Lottery and the Financial Processing Unit (CTIF) concerning suspected money laundering,” the prosecutor’s spokesperson An Schoonjans said in a statement.

“The criminal investigation is ongoing,” she added, declining to give further information. Belgian newspaper Le Soir and outlet Follow the Money first reported on the months-long investigation into the Belgian politician.

Reynders is suspected of having used large amounts of cash to buy lottery tickets of a value between €1 and €100 for about a decade, Le Soir and FTM reported. The gains from the lottery tickets were then allegedly transferred on to Reynders’ account at the National Lottery, and ultimately to his bank account.

Reynders was, until Sunday, the EU commissioner for justice, in charge of how the rule of law is enforced in the bloc, as well as agencies such as Europol and Eurojust, which facilitate cross-border operations and the sharing of evidence.

The searches happened two days after his immunity as commissioner was lifted.

The total amount of cash used to buy the lottery tickets has not been reported, and the origin of the cash is now a subject of the investigation.

Reynders could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokesperson for his party, Mouvement Réformateur, did not reply to a request for comment.

The francophone politician has been a mainstay on the Belgian political scene for decades, serving as finance minister between 1999 and 2011. During some of this time he was also in charge of the national lottery, though the allegations concern a period when he was no longer finance minister, according to the reports.

He was Belgium’s minister of foreign affairs until 2019, before becoming the EU’s justice commissioner.

Reynders was accused in 2019 by a former member of Belgium’s intelligence services of corruption and money laundering in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the allegations were not substantiated at the time. The commissioner back then denied any wrongdoing.

After the end of his term as EU commissioner, Reynders had sought another five years as a member of Ursula von der Leyen’s team, but the Belgian government replaced him with former foreign minister Hadja Lahbib, who now is in charge of the equality portfolio.