Former Bpost boss Jean-Paul Van Avermaet — © Dieter Telemans
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Two former direct employees of former Bpost CEO Jean-Paul Van Avermaet have pleaded guilty in the US for prohibited market agreements in the security sector. Van Avermaet himself continues to maintain his innocence.
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Pascal Dendooven
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Bart Verbeeck, former sales director of G4S Belgium, and Robby Van Mele, the former operational director, announced last Monday that they were guilty of prohibited price fixing together with sector peers. They also said that they manipulated tenders in tenders and made agreements with sector members about who could submit the winning tender for which tender.
Bad news for Jean-Paul Van Avermaet, because the facts date from when the former Bpost boss was still cluster manager of G4S Belgium. He himself refuses to plead guilty. Van Avermaet was officially indicted in the United States at the end of June and must appear before a ‘grand jury’. Verbeeck and Van Mele fit for that honor by confessing.
At the end of June, G4S Belgium already pleaded guilty on all these points and the company agreed to pay a fine of 15 million dollars. In return, it received an additional 30 percent reduction in sentence. Verbeeck and Van Mele tacked on Monday. At the time, both were very close colleagues of Jean-Paul Van Avermaet, who was country manager at G4S.
Ten years in prison
In addition to Van Avermaet, Danny Vandormael and his former right-hand man Peter Verpoort and their former employer Seris were also charged. If Van Avermaet, Vandormael and Verpoort are convicted, they risk up to ten years in prison and a fine of 1 million. Anyone who chose to plead guilty could face up to two years in prison. In the US, this procedure comes with a hefty price tag, in the form of sky-high attorneys’ fees.
Van Avermaet was already in full selection for his position at Bpost when he organized a breakfast meeting in hotel Van der Valk in Zaventem on 17 September 2019, in which the leaders discussed how they would divide the tenders among themselves. On November 6, 2019, Bpost announced that Van Avermaet would become CEO of the public company in February 2020. There he was fired again after a year because he provided hardly any information about the ongoing investigation in the United States to his employer.
The focus of the Americans is specifically on the American interests that were violated in Belgium. The surveillance contracts relate to security services provided to the US Department of Defense and to NATO’s information agency NCI.
Belgian research
In addition to the American investigation, an investigation by the Belgian Competition Authority (BMA) is also underway in Belgium. Here too, that procedure will probably be settled in two parts: parties that admit guilt and receive a lower fine in return from the auditor. And parties such as Van Avermaet who maintain that they have done nothing wrong and bring the file before the competition court. Where the BMA proceeds to fines, in the US the emphasis is on prison sentences.
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