16 mei 2022
14:27
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Bank Degroof Petercam has reached a settlement of millions with the Liège public prosecutor’s office to definitively close an old client file of the private banking arm.
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The settlement is briefly mentioned in Degroof Petercam’s 2021 annual report, which De Tijd was able to view. It states that the bank concluded a transaction with the Belgian public prosecutor ‘in the context of an old client file of the private bank’. The text adds that the Luxembourg branch of Degroof Petercam and the Belgian parent company decided to reach the settlement “which does not involve an admission of guilt”.
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The annual report states that the settlement ‘does not constitute an admission of guilt’.
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The reason is that the file can be definitively closed as a result and ‘procedural uncertainties, mainly with regard to the associated long periods’, will come to an end. The annual report does not state an amount, but the settlement has been included in the figures under the group’s ‘other operating expenses’. These increased from 13.4 to 25.4 million euros last year, with the deal as the main explanation.
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Million dollar amount
In all likelihood, the settlement is located there in the figures under ‘miscellaneous’, one of the three components of ‘other operating expenses’. In the ‘miscellaneous’ category there was an increase from 5.2 million euros in 2020 to 23.1 million last year, a difference of almost 18 million euros. This indicates that the settlement is worth millions.
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Arnaud Denis, spokesman for Degroof Petercam, confirms that the bank has concluded a transaction, but does not provide further information. According to Catherine Collignon, the press magistrate of the Liège public prosecutor’s office, it concerns a settlement with that public prosecutor, but she also says that she cannot provide any additional information.
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UN Reconstruction
In February last year It became known that the Liège court was investigating hundreds of millions of euros of suspicious money from a Walloon family that had worked for and with the arms manufacturer FN Herstal for decades. The capital had been parked at Degroof Petercam for years.
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It involved more than 400 million euros that was transferred from Switzerland to Luxembourg and only ended up at Degroof Petercam in Brussels in 2015. That was a year after the death of Gustave Joassart of the eponymous family that had ties to FN Herstal for decades.
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money laundering investigation
Its own money laundering investigation at Degroof Petercam led to the bank informing the government’s anti-money laundering unit in 2016. He passed the file on to the public prosecutor. There is no certainty that the settlement relates to that file, but there is a good chance. In any case, it complies with the description in the annual report.
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For several years now, Degroof Petercam has been frantically trying to enforce stricter rules for the sector, especially when it comes to tackling money laundering. This is mainly due to a very negative review by the National Bank in 2019, which showed that the institution fell short in the fight against money laundering.
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Then it also became known that a criminal investigation was underway into Degroof Petercam in that area in Liège, but that turned out not to be the result of the actions of the National Bank. It was at the root of it. Only later did the link with FN Herstal and the Joassart family surface.
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Significantly higher dividend
After the good results in 2021, Degroof Petercam proposes to the general meeting to pay out a gross dividend of 6 euros per share. That is considerably more than in previous years, when corona put a brake on the dividend policy of the banks. Net, the 6 euros means that about 44 million euros will flow to the shareholders. These are mainly the families behind Degroof and Petercam, the shipping company CLdN of the Cigrang family and investment company Cobepa.
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