Judge investigating Fortis has BNB searched

The judge investigating the criminal aspects of the Fortis case has had the National Bank of Belgium (BNB) searched. He is looking into exchanges between the regulator and Fortis, reveals L’Echo on Saturday. Investigating judge Patrick Gaudius, who took over from Judge Jeroen Burm in the criminal case against Fortis on February 1st, has been very active in the investigation. He took charge of a series of additional tasks at the request of the opposing parties. According to L’Echo, this led to a recent search at the headquarters of BNB. There is also talk of 3 letters rogatory: one in the Netherlands, one in the United States, and one in France.

Investigators went to the BNB headquarters mainly to obtain the record of communications between CBFA (Financial services and markets authority, renamed FSMA) and Fortis (now Ageas) in the months preceding the dismantling of the bank-insurer. This request came from attorney Laurent Arnauts representing over 1,300 Fortis share-holders in the criminal case.

(Source: Belga)