The Belgian lawyer and former Liberal representative from Ghent, Geert Versnick, has died at the age of 68, as confirmed by Open VLD on Sunday following a report by Het Laatste Nieuws.
Versnick had recently been diagnosed with cancer.
He was a prominent figure in Ghent politics and East Flanders, serving as alderman and president of Ghent’s Public Welfare Centre from 1988, federal MP, and provincial deputy for East Flanders starting in 2013.
His political career began in the 1980s as an assistant to Liberal leader and then deputy prime minister Willy Declerq. Versnick also worked with former deputy prime minister Guy Verhofstadt and served as secretary general of Open VLD from 1993 to 1999. In 1999, he unsuccessfully ran for the party leadership against Karel De Gucht.
Between 1994 and 2010, he was a member of the Chamber of Representatives, where he led the parliamentary inquiry into the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba from 2000 to 2001.
Although part of the celebrated “golden generation” of Ghent Liberals following their remarkable electoral success in 1988, Versnick’s career was not without controversy.
He was implicated in the Optima affair and gained a reputation as “the king of mandates,” holding at least 20 in 2015, 15 of which were paid. Allegations of conflicts of interest arose but were never proven.
Versnick also faced criticism for his close ties to construction companies while overseeing spatial planning. In 2017, it was revealed that he had wrongly billed East Flanders province for hotel expenses in Thailand and flight tickets.
