Like the musketeers, there are four of them at the Brussels public prosecutor’s office. Four magistrates to fight white-collar crime. One of them, Attorney General Patrick Carolus, published a book for the general public which takes stock of this delinquency, the damage of which amounts to tens of billions of euros each year for the finances of the State and those of the European Union. It is estimated at 137 billion for the European budget.
The new Eliot Ness
It took time but Europe has finally organized itself with the establishment in 2020 of a European financial prosecutor’s office whose role is to investigate and prosecute fraud of all kinds concerning its budgets and financial interests. Until then, national authorities who could alone investigate and prosecute these crimes could not act beyond their borders.
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There was urgency. In the first six months, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office opened 26 investigations in Belgium alone relating to fraud which caused damage estimated at €324 million. The following year, the toll rose to 54 investigations for a shortfall of more than €1.33 billion for the Belgian chapter alone, including 500 million for VAT fraud, 300 million for the Silk Road affair. at Liège Airport and a significant amount for irregularities during orders for anti-Covid vaccines. This European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the true spearhead of the fight against serious financial crime in the European Union, is based in Luxembourg. It has a chief prosecutor, the Romanian Laura Codruta Kövesi, 22 European prosecutors – including a Belgian – and nearly 200 specialized technicians and investigators, the new Eliot Ness.
“Destabilization”
Cybercrime, serious and organized tax fraud, drug trafficking, games, the environment, human trafficking, Dubai Papers, Panama Papers, Qatargate, the Citibank affair, the aborted Fortis trial, the 200 billion scandal € from Danske Bank: white-collar crime is a thousand-tentacled hydra that spares no sector.
Crime in the city of Liège is falling
To combat it for more than thirty years as a magistrate at the Brussels public prosecutor’s office and since 2010 at the general public prosecutor’s office, Patrick Carolus is on the same line as former judge Claise. For them, “the laundering of money and criminal capital – especially from drug trafficking – represents a risk of destabilization for the security and integrity of our democracies”. This is not said lightly. We know to what extent magistrates weigh and measure their words.
Drugs ! In France, cannabis money alone represents an annual hidden turnover of €1 billion. Difficult to say for us. Patrick Carolus looked for them but the data seems to be lacking for Belgium, he noted.
Track down fraudsters
Faced with the challenges, we must not believe that the police and the justice system are keeping their arms crossed. After two years, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office mentioned above had 1,117 investigations underway for total damage estimated at €14.1 billion. And the judges had already ordered the freezing of €359 million.
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In Belgium, where tax fraud weighs €30 billion per year, a report from the Financial Information Processing Unit, the CTIF, announced, at the end of 2022, that it had transmitted 1,257 new money laundering files to the judicial authorities, from which it emerged already €300 million in confiscation of laundered funds in 2020 following 630 convictions for money laundering offences. Thirty billion in tax fraud per year! Imagine what the country could achieve with 30 billion well managed.
Fake diplomas
In his book “White Collar Crime” which he publishes with Anthenis, general counsel Patrick Carolus recounts the affair of the Eurogold exchange office, rue de la Bourse in Brussels, where hundreds of millions of pounds sterling had been deposited to be converted into euros. The Financial Services and Markets Authority, the FSMA, finally imposed a penalty of €300,000 on Eurogold while the Brussels public prosecutor’s office was going to seek sentences of up to 4 years’ imprisonment against the “mules” who carried out transport.
Patrick Carolus wants to be accessible to a wide audience. “We still imagine that white-collar crime is elite crime. The reality today is that it has become a crime for everyone.” Example, this case from 2023 where the University of Liège filed a complaint against 5 people suspected of having produced false documents to allow the registration of Cameroonian students. At least 45 falsified files had been identified by the university. Example again: this decision of February 2024 where the Brussels Court of Appeal found that Uber White-collar crime is no longer the preserve of CEOs and businessmen. She is everywhere.
Full pockets
And the mafias are having a field day. Patrick Carolus talks about the “carbon scam”, this scam which cost France €1.6 billion and gave rise to score-settling.
“White Collar Crime” is an eye-opening book, a book that was missing. It allows us to understand the famous “VAT carousels” that we have been talking about since the 1980s without being able to counter them. A specialty of the Italian and Pakistani mafias, they still cost Europe €50 billion each year.
Finally, computer fraud is happening in all directions. Whatever the process, the result is always the same: there are those who fill their pockets with money that they steal, which could be used in projects for the benefit of all.
McDonald’s has failed
When the justice system steps in, cases do not necessarily end up in court. The public prosecutor has a devilishly effective discreet weapon: the plea bargain. With it, the white-collar criminal pays to escape trial, publicity and reputational damage. In 2019 and 2021, two banks in Belgium, UBS and HSBC, preferred to pay €50 million and €294.4 million – this is the current record – to the State in order not to go to trial. This is both considerable and relatively modest if we know that in France, the fast food company McDonald’s paid €1.25 billion for tax evasion.
Change in sight
Patrick Carolus addresses the new Economic and Business Penal Code and the numerous changes it will bring in two years. Thus from April 8, 2026, attempted public corruption (committed by a civil servant, by an elected official) becomes punishable. It will take at least three protagonists to form a criminal association: previously, two were enough. Computer forgery will be punishable by 6 months to 5 years of imprisonment. And VAT fraud, from 8 days to 2 years and a fine of up to €500,000.
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In his book, in the production of which he involved his children Mazarine and Virgile Carolus, Patrick Carolus is not complaining or defeatist but reasonably encouraging and optimistic. For the Advocate General, everything is not gloomy but, he says, we must give ourselves the will and the means.
“White Collar Crime” (253 pages, €55, €25 for students) is nicely prefaced by former judge Michel Claise who also knows a thing or two about the subject. Let us add that the cover image was created by AI, artificial intelligence, a first!
