Football club sales
If it depends on the public prosecutor, Roger Vanden Stock (81) and Herman Van Holsbeeck (69) – the former chairman and former manager of RSC Anderlecht – will have to appear in court after possible fraud in the sale of the football club.
Mark Eeckhaut, Chris Verhaeghe
Today at 5:45 PM
Roger Vanden Stock and Herman Van Holsbeeck stood before the council chamber on Thursday, together with fourteen other people and companies, on suspicion of fraud, corruption, forgery, money laundering and abuse of trust, among other things. The council chamber must decide whether they will be referred to court.
Marc Coucke bought the Brussels football club Anderlecht at the end of 2017 for an amount of 59 million euros. But in the months before Coucke bought the club, player agent Christophe Henrotay also actively looked for a buyer for the club. He introduced Uzbek millionaire Alisher Usmanov as a potential buyer. But after that deal fell through and Coucke eventually bought the club, Henrotay felt he was still entitled to a commission of around 3 million euros. He received one million euros from the old Anderlecht shareholders. But Henrotay would have wanted the full three million euros.
Leander Dendoncker
The former Anderlecht board would therefore have changed the contract of player Leander Dendoncker, so that a 2 million euro commission would go to his agent Henrotay when the player was sold. When Dendoncker was sold to Wolverhampton in England in 2018, the new Anderlecht board of Marc Coucke – and not the old board – was responsible for the committee. The federal public prosecutor’s office therefore wants to bring the old Anderlecht top as well as Henrotay and the lawyers who made the deal possible to court because they allegedly defrauded the new board with that transaction.
On Thursday, the prosecutor and the civil party – the new Anderlecht board – argued before the council chamber. The suspects will have their say on March 12. It will be known before the summer whether and which of the sixteen will have to go to trial. The suspects deny that they did anything illegal.