Belgian Commissioner-designate for Justice Didier Reynders is accused of accepting bribes and money laundering after the first set of corruption allegations by former Belgian secret agent Nicolas Ullens de Schooten were dismissed by the prosecutor. Ullens filed another lawsuit on Wednesday and his lawyer says he received death threats from his former superiors under Reynders. The liberal politician was previously involved in dubious deals in Saudi Arabia and Libya, countries not known for their transparent financial systems or civil liberties protection.

Former secret agent Nicolas Ullens de Schooten has accused Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders of arms deals and taking bribes for the award of public contracts in Kinshasha. Reynders is the European Justice Commissioner-designate, nominated by Belgium. Ullens was an intelligence officer with the Belgian National Security Service between 2007 and 2018 and dealt mainly with white-collar crimes.

In claims submitted to the Belgian Prosecutor, Ullens says that he submitted several reports during his tenure at the Security Service that Reynders (while finance minister and then foreign minister) could be involved in several cases of corruption and money laundering. However, no investigation was launched against the liberal politician, despite the reports. 

After filing the allegations, Ullens s lawyer Alexis Deswaef told Belgian paper Le Soir that his client had received death threats from the head of the Belgian secret service who had sought to dissuade Ullens from taking the matter further. If the Brussels  Attorney General does not ignore Ullens s second submission like he did with the first one (the case was dropped last Friday in the absence of evidence, curiously a few days before Reynders EP hearing), then the Liberal politician would also have to face accusations of intimidation and abuse of power.

Reynders is suspected of accepting millions of euros in bribes in a public procurement procedure for the construction of the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He allegedly also took a cut in Kazakhstan arms deals between 2009 and 2011, involving warlords of highly questionable political backgrounds, while finace minister. 

In this period, he had meetings disguised as political visits with Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhaffi, who was toppled in 2011 after 42 years in power. After Gadhaffi s fall, assets estimated at 14 billion euros were blocked by the Libyan Investment Authority, overseen by the EU. Reynders, then finance minister, had recently been appointed to lead the foreign ministry, but had not blocked the interest payments before he changed offices. The authorities lost track of hundreds of millions of euros, which were presumably transferred to fictitious accounts of members of the Libyan militia, who were actively involved in people smuggling. Reynders has never given a satisfactory explanation for his actions, nor accounted for how he gained possession of some valuable African art pieces.  

The Belgian Commissioner-designate s reputation is further tarnished by a private visit to Saudi Arabia n 2012 while foreign minister, where he was received by Prince Najef bin Fawwaz Al Sha lan. A French court sentenced the Saudi prince for ten years in prison in 2007 for smuggling two tons of cocaine into his country on a diplomatic plane, but he remains at large due to the absence of an extradition agreement between Interpol and Saudi Arabia. When the dubious meeting came to light, Reynders told Belgian journalists that he was clueless as to the prince s criminal past.

The ostenstibly liberal commissioner-designate also appears to harbour racist tendencies: in 2015 he wore the infamous blackface when he dressed up as „Black Peter” at a charity event intended to raised money for ill children. Descendants of slaves abducted from Africa in the 19th century, including the Belgian Congo, understandably fail to see the funny side of such jokes in Belgium or anywhere else in the world.

Reynders reacted to the allegations of corruption and money laundering during Wednesday s EP hearing by saying that he had learnt of the allegations from the press. He assured the committee that the lawsuit against him was based on false accusations and instructed his lawyer to take the necessary legal steps. At the same time, he insisted on his old mantra that the rule of law must be protected in the EU in every possible way, and new mechanisms are needed alongside existing instruments (such as Article 7 of the EU Treaty), which he would use against Poland and Hungary. Reynders stressed at the meeting of the relevant EP committees that a new toolset is necessary, and effective preventive measures shall be made available to protect democracy and fundamental rights.