Ex-Belgian Premier Convicted of 100 Counts of Tax Evasion, Forgery

Former Belgian Premier Paul Vanden Boeynants was convicted Wednesday of more than 100 counts of tax evasion and forgery and sentenced to a suspended three-year jail term.

Vanden Boeynants, 67, also was fined $13,600.

Prosecutors alleged that he gained $4.4 million from forgery and tax evasion from 1967 to 1982. He paid $527,000 in back taxes before his trial but maintained that he was innocent of the charges.

Vanden Boeynants, a Christian Democrat, was premier from 1966 to 1968 and 1978 to 1979. He was first elected to Parliament in 1949 and held various Cabinet posts, including that of defense minister.

“Tax evasion is your second nature,” Court President Carlos Amores Martinez y Amore told him during sentencing. “You who imposed laws on others had to respect them. But, owing to your political career and the services you did the country, the court won’t send you to jail.”

‘Upset, to Say the Least’

Vanden Boeynants listened passively as the verdict was read, but said later, “I am upset, to say the least. It’s incredible. The sentence is absolutely surprising and beyond all bounds. I cannot accept, above all, the unusual comments made in a court.”

The trial began in January but was interrupted before resuming March 26.

The prosecution charged that Vanden Boeynants falsified the books of several food companies in which he had interests and also falsified reports on funds he deposited in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

He was convicted of faking the signature of Antoine Francis, then Lebanon’s ambassador to Belgium, on a document dated June 14, 1974. The document said that Vanden Boeynants had sold stock to Francis for $880,000, and the prosecutor said the former premier used the document to evade taxes.

Vanden Boeynants acknowledged in court that the signature was forged but said he was not the forger.