Proposition 54K2753

Projet de loi modifiant diverses dispositions du droit pénal, de la procédure pénale et du droit judiciaire.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Swedish coalition

Submission date

Nov. 6, 2017

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

judicial proceedings criminal procedure criminal law

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Open Vld N-VA MR PP

Voted to reject

Groen Vooruit Ecolo PS | SP PVDA | PTB

Abstained from voting

LE ∉ VB

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Discussion ¶

March 8, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mr. Speaker, the bill aims to correct several texts, in consequence of judgments issued by the Constitutional Court. The most important of them concerns the criminal transaction. I have no doubt that each speaker in the committee would like to repeat his position on the occasion of this debate. I will therefore refer to my written report on this subject.

For the rest, the text also aims at other corrections – but you indicated this in submitting the bill – related to confiscation, communication at the time of the judicial information, the criminal investigation of enforcement, the procedural compensation and other minor changes to be made to the Code of Criminal Procedure or the Judicial Code.

Mr. Minister, it was not clear to everyone at the first presentation of the present draft law containing various provisions on criminal law that the so-called law on redemption for tax fraudsters, also known as the extended amicable settlement, is hidden in it. The bill is a blunder that regulates all sorts of matters. The government already has a patent on this type of laws.

The draft law adapts several laws: the Criminal Procedure Code, the Criminal Code and the Judicial Code. The text is key, among other things, to the right of access and investigation, mediation in criminal cases, the declaration of seizure, the enforcement investigation and the judicial fee.

The main obstacle in the draft, at least for our group, is the repair of the notorious Acquisition Act, which was destroyed by dozens of recent Constitutional Court rulings.

We can still understand that the tax officer and the judiciary are making settlements with the proverbial beehive or baker who has forgotten to deposit his income. They still pay the amounts and fines owed. However, the text also sets out the tax white board crime, i.e. the friendly settlement for large tax fraudsters. Our group had great problems from the outset. In that regard, the balance is far from being sought between striving for a proper taxation and arranging friendly settlements for those who forget to indicate certain incomes.

I would like to reiterate that the balance is very much sought in this regard. This type of tax fraud can be called tax crime. Therefore, it should not be eligible for friendly settlements. Such conduct should only lead to criminal prosecution and convictions.

The draft law of Mr Vanvelthoven, which was linked to the present draft law, therefore provided for the exclusion of serious tax fraud from the scope of the extended amicable settlement. Furthermore, my group is supported by experts such as Michel Maus, who in his written opinion called for legal frameworks that determine which settlement form will be applied. Amicable settlement is excluded for fraud above 1 million euros.

We are sending the wrong signal, Mr. Speaker. Your majority tell the scammers that they can just continue to cheat. After all, if they run against the light, but can spend a lot of money on expensive consultants and lawyers, they can do business with the Belgian State and regulate their situation through a friendly settlement.

I’m not saying anything new here when I say that a Brussels investigative judge is currently finishing his criminal file against the Swiss HSBC Private Bank. This bank is accused in our country of money laundering practices in the benefit of many thousands of Belgian customers. If nothing happens, then our country in that file threatens to miss hundreds of millions of euros.

Mr. Minister, because the decisions of the Constitutional Court suspended the arrangement regarding the amicable settlement, you were bound by hands and feet, so you let everyone know. You found that it could not be continued until the investigation committee-Kazachgate under the chairmanship of colleague Dirk Van der Maelen had completed its work. It is true that the investigation committee is currently working on end-to-end recommendations about what went wrong in the past with the notorious disbursement law. Suddenly, you no longer need those recommendations and you work super fast. We find this a little strange.

My colleague Dirk Van der Maelen forced hearings at the first discussion of the bill. These hearings were held in January last year. We not only learned there that criminal judges indeed insist on a repair, because the legal text is kaduuk; concerning the principle discourse we have also often received the confirmation of our view that the present draft really cannot. I will not repeat all of our comments from the committee meetings in detail, but I would like to emphasize a flagrant element of the law and I hope you listen carefully.

The small fraudster must experience his conviction in a public hearing in a criminal prosecution. The mega-fraudsters can go through any process that is incurred against them, quietly and in all anonymity and with the representation of their expensive consultants in the midst and far from the cameras. We not only find this unfair, we also find it incorrect and unethical.

You understand that the credibility of the court and the judiciary is therefore heavily at stake. That was, by the way, also the rake comment of the High Council for Justice, yet not the first the best body.

In my speeches I have often talked about the danger of class justice. This danger is again rising with the government. It is now back to that point: the present draft law is another piece of class justice. I wonder why I have to keep repeating this here, almost alone in the desert.

Mr. Minister, I am closing my speech. The proposed text corrects a lot of things; I refer to my listing. But that the ransom law for major tax crime is repaired instead of being removed, that our faction can not and never live with.

We will therefore soon vote against with great conviction and indignation.

Mr. Minister, today we get another pop-up, even if you dare not call it so anymore, because later the Roman X would have to be placed behind it and then it will be very bad.

The text responds to a number of judgments of the Constitutional Court on legal provisions that need to be corrected. Some of them were not problematic and had been waiting for correction for a while.

It is not only about the correction of the extended friendly arrangement, to which I will return later, but also about the correction of other important provisions. Therefore, we must not blindly look at this extended friendly settlement. For example, it is a correction in connection with the right of access in the criminal file. The Constitutional Court, in fact, saw a difference in terms of access to a criminal file during an investigation or judicial investigation and ruled that victims who request access to the criminal file during an investigation or judicial investigation are treated unequally.

I realize very well that it is not obvious to do this exercise. I realize what you want to do in the longer term: you want one type of procedure and then all the differences between the two procedures are resolved immediately.

That is not correct.

Do you no longer want it? You wanted to do it, but you will not do it again.

However, you have a point when you say that there may still be comments from the Constitutional Court, because there are some differences between the two procedures.

The solution that is being pushed forward today with regard to the access to the file is an attempt to fix the problem, but as I also said in the committee, I am not really enthusiastic about that scheme. The possibility of access is nevertheless not as simple in detection studies as it is proposed today. After all, the time limit given to the prosecutor’s office to judge whether or not to give access to the file can reach almost five months. Of course, these are all maximum deadlines, but we can assume that, when such a request comes in, the prosecutor’s office will not treat it as a priority and the deadline will be exhausted very often, meaning that it will have to wait four to five months before a victim receives a decision on access to the file or not.

I think the problem of equal treatment is still not resolved. Who knows, the Constitutional Court will again have to decide on the problem and judge on the proposed solution.

Furthermore, a number of other provisions provide a solution to the problems with court fees identified in the Constitutional Court judgment. We also supported them. I would like to thank the majority and the minister for accepting a number of suggestions and amendments from the opposition with a view to the best possible arrangement.

Additionally, there are provisions on the extended amicable settlement to meet the important judgment of the Constitutional Court that ruled that the original extended amicable settlement was contrary to the Constitution. The fundamental mistake in that law was that the judge was essentially excluded. He could no longer take a decision on a case once the prosecutor’s office had reached an agreement with the defendants and a sum of money and taxes had been paid. This resulted in the fact that the case did not come before the court, that the case was settled in the mind and that no publicity was given to it, with all the problems thereof.

In fact, with the original ransom law, which was passed a few years ago, class justice was installed in our country. The large fraud files were handled in this way, while perpetrators of a very small crime often did not qualify, the prosecutor's office did not take the initiative or was not interested in an arrangement. The law especially benefited large fraudsters, perpetrators of serious socio-economic crimes. That was not correct.

Then it’s not just about the case-Chodiev, for which there was a lot of media aggression. Many cases relating to the diamond sector or banking sector are or will be regulated by law.

There were several problems, apart from the principle question. They could still enjoy it, even after previous severe convictions. It could even during the course of a judicial investigation, where the consent of the investigation judge was absolutely not required. It could still be, after one had been judged in the case and a judge had basically already bowed over the case. It could initially even appeal, but that possibility had already been reduced. Edoch, during the hearings a Attorney General from Brussels came to plead to make the arrangement again possible in the degree of appeal. Fortunately, we did not get involved.

Whenever that man comes to the committee, he has proposals, which always go further, because he never considers the proposed texts sufficient. We know him in the meantime. But also the majority says from time to time that it has been enough and that they will not follow all suggestions. Fortunately, this is not repeated in this regard.

The main problem that the Constitutional Court raised was that the judge was essentially unable to make an assessment. It argued that a proportionality test was necessary. Unfortunately, it did not say that the opportunity should also be tested. That would have been even better.

The amount of the penalty is another issue. In this regard, some of the experts heard noted that cases of very large tax fraud can lead to a relatively low fine, even with the maximum fines provided in the legislation. Although the amount may seem large, in proportion it may still be low. This problem is not resolved in the present draft. We have therefore proposed another amendment that stipulates that a friendly settlement is only possible if the crime concerns an amount of less than 1 million euros, but that was unfortunately rejected in the committee.

Another issue is publicity and openness. The first friendly settlements in cases of tax fraud were often very frustrating for the citizen and the press because it was difficult to know exactly what decision was taken and what the exact content of the friendly settlement was. I still remember the case-Janssens – the king of traffic signs – in which a friendly settlement was also decided and in which the press was in vain looking for the fine that the accused had to pay to buy off their trial. It can of course not. If Justice sets up such a mechanism, there must be absolute transparency. That will now be possible to remediate because the judgment will take place in a public hearing and all data will be known.

There are, therefore, a number of problems left, Mr. Minister, besides the principle side of the matter. After all, we believe that the expansion that has been carried out is better disposed of. We obviously have no problem with the amicable settlement for smaller crimes, as we knew them until a year or five years ago, but the extension to also regulate the cases of large tax fraud is unlawful. We would rather turn the clock back, but unfortunately there is still no majority in Parliament.

Apart from the principle, there are still a number of problems. In fact, it is still possible to make a settlement after the summoning and referral by the council and still in the case of a judicial investigation without the consent of the investigation judge. Another problem is that the court may, in essence, assess proportionality, but not opportunity. The problem of the amount of the penalty is also not resolved.

What should we then do? Proponents argue that it is better in a case that, after years of research, threatens to age at some point, to choose eggs for his money. They would then prefer that a sum be paid rather than that the case expires in fine or that the reasonable period expires. However, if we want to address the problem fundamentally, we can do a number of things. We must invest in a stronger Justice, stop saving on Justice, and ensure that Justice is strengthened.

More experts on tax fraud should help justice. Strong, specialized police and investigators should be at the disposal of prosecutors and investigators. There should also be more specialized prosecutors and judges in the field of major tax fraud. In addition, complex procedural rules should be simplified and abuses excluded.

This can be perfectly accomplished by implementing a number of recommendations from the inquiry committee on the failed tax evasion of a few years ago, which is a modification of the small Franchimont, which is often abused to systematically delay matters pending before the council.

There are, therefore, possibilities to address the problem fundamentally and to avoid such serious matters in the future.

We would have better invested in it than revitalized the extended friendly settlement.

For all these reasons, we will not be able to support the present text.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, regarding the various provisions of this text, I will address the problem of the criminal transaction, the basis of which was invalidated by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that the judge did not have the means to verify the legality of having a judicial control of the proposed transactions. It was therefore appropriate to reconsider this text and rewrite it.

Mr. Minister, the way we deal with it is not the most interesting; it is even, in some respects, ⁇ appealing to the legislature. I explain: our assembly considered that it was necessary to set up an investigative commission on what was called Kazakhgate. This Commission revolves around the implementation of the principle of criminal transaction. We hope it will complete its work within a reasonable time. Like any good commission of inquiry, it will issue recommendations to the legislator we are.

Mr. Minister, the wisdom, on the one hand, and the respect of Parliament, on the other, had been to wait for the conclusions of this inquiry committee. I do not understand how parliamentarians members of the majority today agree to play that game while we know that tomorrow, probably, we will be made recommendations that will undoubtedly encourage us to change the texts on the criminal transaction. We worked; this was overturned by the Constitutional Court and we are reformulating principles that may not be those that the inquiry committee will hold. We could have expected the results of this and have done a more comprehensive and ⁇ collective work.

On the basis of the criminal transaction, I heard that those who have expressed themselves so far are opposed to the principle. As for my group, we have evolved on this issue. In fact, in the beginning, the criminal transaction is something that does not exist in our law. Any innovation is sometimes considered dangerous or difficult. Then, the hearings that our commission conducted had the merit of explaining to us that within the judicial world, the principle of transaction is consensual.

I hear some say that the criminal transaction is reserved for the most favoured margin of prosecutors, at the expense of those who will not benefit from it; that it is a two-speed justice; that X will be convicted by a correctional court while Y will have the "chance" to benefit from a criminal transaction; that there is therefore a risk of discrimination.

I find this statement without nuance. Today, the criminal judge has at his disposal a range of so-called alternative penalties, which allow him to individualize the penalty according to the personality of the individual he has to judge. Even if the defendant could not "benefit" from a criminal transaction, one can still expect the judge to apply an appropriate penalty.

As a person, it doesn’t bother me that big fraudsters, big companies are stakeholders in the criminal transaction. Criminal transaction helps to avoid some form of impunity. It is well known that these large groups, that the people who have the means to pay themselves the best tax lawyers, for example, will use all the crafts and all the procedural threads to eventually play the prescription and result in that no more decision is possible, or that the decision takes into account the exceeding of the reasonable time. Criminal transaction can therefore make sense.

The real hassle I have about this situation is that ultimately, if the judicial world finds this tool interesting and if we consider it to be a minor evil, it is precisely because it is a minor evil, because justice is no longer able to do its job. It is the inability of the judiciary to make justice within a reasonable time.

Who is responsible for this situation? It is not the judiciary alone. It is also the political world, the legislative power, which we are, and the executive power, which you represent, Mr. Minister.

My conclusion is that I prefer criminal transaction to criminal impunity because we would have played the clock and benefited from the prescription. It is therefore more by concern of efficiency and sense of justice that we can accept the principle of transaction in our judicial system. Not to mention that it is an interesting way to recover criminal fines and recover objects, or even patrimonial benefits.

It is a tool that has its place in our system. This transaction needs to be framed to ensure that it is non-discriminatory, transparent and allows the citizen to believe that justice has done its job.

Several amendments have been submitted to the committee. Some objections were accepted. We can be pleased that the control of the judge has intervened, also because the ability to propose the criminal transaction in the degree of appeal has been abandoned.

On the other hand, it is unacceptable – and that is why my group will abstain – that you extend the possibility of criminal transaction beyond the settlement of the procedure. Until now, this was done within this framework; without the judge's control, which is why the Court cancelled it. There will be a judge’s review tomorrow, but I think we should have stayed within the framework of the procedure. This seems to me more coherent, more timely and less discriminatory. This allows at least to avoid a difference in treatment between persons subject to judicial information, those who are prosecuted in the framework of an investigation or those who will be returned to the correctional court. For the most surprising thing in the system you propose is this: while a trial is ongoing, the parties are quoted before the correctional court before a judge; at one point or another of this procedure, the prosecutor's office will be able to say "we stop everything" and will propose to the parties a criminal transaction.

It is exciting and even frightening. A trial has begun and, during the trial, the prosecutor’s office, also a party to the trial in criminal matters, asks to stop everything, see the parties present and how to propose a criminal transaction. As a lawyer, I think something is wrong. This is a breakdown that further accentuates the heavy tendency of this majority to entrust more and more powers to the prosecutor’s office, whose independence is known to not be the same as that of the seat magistrate. It is therefore a strong tendency that you accentuate by allowing the King’s Attorney to intervene and short-circuit an ongoing trial.

This is ultimately diminishing the power of the judge even as the Constitutional Court requested that the text be corrected to allow the judge to assess this transaction and how it had been negotiated and resulted. This is the key element on the basis of which we will not vote this text.

Furthermore, and it seems to me that Mr. Van Hecke referred to it in his speech, Mr. Delmulle, who also requested that the possibility of requesting a criminal transaction at the level of the appeal be considered, confided us that the transaction, as applied today, sometimes did not meet its purpose.

As I have already said, we are dealing with large financial groups whose budgets are often far greater than those of the SPF that you run, Mr. Minister, and whose proposed fines are roupies compared to their turnover. These groups may laugh at the proposals that are being made to them.

At least, everyone had agreed to adjust the capacity for fines that could be imposed as part of the criminal transaction. But if everyone agreed that it was a good idea, no one has yet found the way, from our texts, to come to the point that, for example, the fine represents a percentage of the turnover of the company involved in the criminal transaction.

In this case, we will no longer be accused of discrimination when the little one goes before the judge and the big one benefits from the criminal transaction. The amounts of the criminal transaction would be adapted to the contributing capacity of the fraudster since it is very frequently in the context of fraud that this transaction takes place. This, too, is something that we will have to put back on the job and for which we will have to find solutions.

Finally – and I’m almost back at the beginning of my speech, when I indicated that parliament was being mocked – regardless of the ongoing work of the Kazakhgate commission, the Panama Papers committee, whose chairman was still here a few moments ago, had also issued recommendations. It requested, in particular, that the reference amounts of fines in excess of evaded taxes be fixed on the basis of the fraud charges concerned, that advertising of concluded transactions be arranged at least indirectly and that a possibility of transaction be prohibited after the conclusion of the investigation. However, we do not find these recommendations in the bill, although they had been made available to the government and the majority and could have been integrated. The prohibition to conclude a transaction after the end of the instruction means that it was appropriate to stay to the previous procedure, i.e. to refer to a magistrat.

Mr. Minister, we will not vote against the text, because some of its proposals approve us, but it has not been sufficiently thorough as regards the transaction.

Mr. Speaker, the vote on this bill resembles a new law called pot-pourri to which you have become accustomed, in that this bill changes provisions both on the level of criminal law and on the level of procedure. These codes essential to the functioning of our justice thus become more and more dense in anticipation of a more readable and simpler redesign, in the interest of the practitioners but also of the justiciables.

This bill, on the other hand, distinguishes itself from your pot-pourri laws because it has received, for once, a little more support, for a number of its principles, from the judiciary whose representatives have been heard in commission. It is true that you had the obligation, Mr. Minister, to respond to judgments of the Constitutional Court, to apply in Belgian law European directives, whether it is confiscation, access to the file subject to information or instruction, effective recourse in the context of the criminal investigation of enforcement, procedural compensation. Therefore you had no choice but to move forward, in accordance with higher imperative standards or with judicial decisions that imposed on you.

It is again, in fact, on the case of the criminal transaction that the opinions were divergent and that the attention of experts was more ⁇ focused on article 216bis of the Code of Criminal Instruction. This modification was made indispensable by the judgment of the Constitutional Court of 2 June 2016 which found that the law of 14 April 2011 violated the right to a fair trial and the principles of equality, non-discrimination, access to justice, independence of the judge and separation of powers, insofar as this law allowed the public prosecutor alone to terminate, after the conclusion of a criminal transaction, an action brought against a justiciable even though the judge had not been able to effectively control this decision.

It is therefore normal that the shadow of the work of the parliamentary investigation committee charged with investigating the circumstances of the adoption of the law of 14 April 2011 has planned on the examination of this bill, as would otherwise be the case for any proposal to amend article 216bis of the Code of Criminal Investigation.

Regardless of the conclusions of this commission of inquiry that it would have been good to wait – I share in this the observations of my colleague, Mr. Brotcorne – it is true that the citizen’s confidence in justice has emerged heavily shaken from this law of 14 April 2011, voted in full speed, without review in the commission of Justice and, in particular, with regard to a system that is similar for some to the “buy” of an agreement allowing to avoid a conviction pronounced by a court and this, ⁇ , in contempt of the equality of citizens before the law.

Unlike other speakers, I do not question the very principle of the criminal transaction. Certainly not because it would be a necessary evil in the face of the material and procedural difficulties that judges must face because of the insufficient resources that are granted to them – this is not the right way to justify the maintenance of the principle of criminal transaction in our legislative arsenal – but because I believe that criminal transaction, when it is well marked on the legal level, is part of the need to have, for certain types of prosecutions, the search for a negotiated justice, but not in all cases of hypotheses of course.

In fact, I consider, like the representatives of the French and German-speaking bars, that the transaction, in certain cases and under certain conditions, constitutes an alternative to criminal prosecution. That is why I hoped, for example, that this bill would be an opportunity to look at the need to take into account the nature of the offence or even the financial capacity of the author in determining whether the criminal transaction should be applied or not. We could have taken advantage of this debate to incorporate in the bill the principle of prohibition of criminal transaction for certain crimes, in particular those arising from financial crime. This would have allowed us to affirm our commitment to fair justice and our rejection of two-speed justice that would favor the richest at the expense of others.

Mr. Minister, this was not the choice of your majority, even though the Panama Papers Commission recommended (Recommendation No. 98bis) to remove serious tax fraud from the cases in which the criminal transaction can result in the extinction of criminal prosecution. I can therefore only regret that the government majority does not even comply with the recommendations adopted – including by itself – at the end of the work of the important Panama Papers commission.

It is still true that the present draft law brings some corrections made necessary following the judgment of the Constitutional Court of 2 June 2016 and which the law pot-pourri II discussed simultaneously had not taken into account at the time, due to the lack of knowledge of the scope of this judgment. As a reminder, the 2016 law had effectively limited the scope of the criminal transaction by not allowing it again once a final judgment has been given on the substance and by adding this type of decision to those that must appear on the extracts of the criminal record which are issued to the magistrates of the public prosecution, the judges of instruction, the judges and advisors of the courts of enforcement of penalties. It was thus put an end, as the judge Michel Claise rightly said, "to the criminal virginity that the criminal transaction allowed some to buy themselves."

This bill will therefore make more effective the control by the court of instruction or judgment of the motivation of the proposed transaction, whether in relation to the legal conditions, the free consent of the author or even the proportionality of the transaction in view of the seriousness of the facts and the personality of the author.

On the other hand, some points were not clarified while they conditioned the answer to the Constitutional Court’s decision. There was, in fact, no agreement on the need for the written nature of the motivation of the approval of the criminal transaction or on the publicity of the hearing of the court of instruction when these debates relate to this approval. These requests were made by the Supreme Council of Justice but were rejected by the representatives of the College of Attorneys-General.

The discussions also failed to provide for better information between the prosecutor's office and the investigation judge seized of a case for which the prosecutor's office plans to propose a criminal transaction. This was, however, an essential request of the investigative judges given the difficulties that may arise from a transaction that is being considered at the same time as investigative duties.

Here are my observations regarding the conditions of the criminal transaction as envisaged in the bill.

Furthermore, the bill is also interesting in that it extends criminal mediation to crimes without victim, allowing the King’s prosecutor to propose to the perpetrator the follow-up of a medical treatment or training or the execution of a work of general interest, even after the initiation of public action. This is a positive measure in that it corresponds to a practice already widespread in many judicial districts. It also goes in the direction of an extension of the range of penalties and the individualization of these, which undoubtedly values the social utility of the sentence pronounced.

However, there was also no need for clarification from the committee discussions. The Attorneys-General and the Professional Union of the Judiciary have requested that the qualification of the House of Justice be provided not according to the domicile of the author but according to the circumscription of the competent prosecutor. It was about avoiding the double reading of the same case by the prosecutors and ensuring a close collaboration between the local prosecutor’s office and the local House of Justice or facilitating the proper course of mediation with the victim, where there is one.

Although the committee adopted amendments in the direction of the experts hearing, it did not take into account this specific request.

Therefore, given these improvements, although sometimes positive but largely insufficient in terms of the criminal transaction, my group will not be able to support this text and will abstain.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I have already intervened in the committee to denounce the operation "We must save the extended criminal transaction", contained in this project. I will only summarize my position.

The main objection relates to the fact that criminal transaction is either a deliberate measure to strengthen class justice for the benefit of the richest, or the acceptance of an increasingly impoverished, increasingly defined justice, a justice to which every citizen does not have equal access. As my colleague Christian Brotcorne has guessed, I think there are both and, in both cases, we strengthen class justice.

We were told that the extended criminal transaction would free time for justice to devote itself to major cases. In practice, however, it is the big financial offenders who can buy their impunity. This is the institutionalization of financial crime. The representatives of the prosecutor’s office who were heard in the committee have confessed it themselves: the amounts of fines are ridiculous for large companies and the wealthiest.

It must be said, however, that class justice is a very concrete phenomenon in our country. On the one hand, we have the apple thief who is prosecuted in court. In the so-called Calvados case – it was, of course, a slightly modified apples, but the Calvados is not less made from apples – a lawyer had requested a criminal transaction for his client guilty of stealing a bottle of Calvados of 20 centiliters and a value of 4.45 euros, which he was denied. On the other hand, the diamonds of Omega Diamonds, the Belgo-Kazakh mafia Patokh Chodiev, the French "serial "licensee" and "serial fraudster" Bernard Arnault, who builds his fortune in particular by restructuring the Carrefour stores - he has just climbed to the fourth place in the world of the largest fortunes - and a series of other large Belgian fortunes have obtained a criminal transaction without difficulty. This parliament even passed the initial criminal transaction law specifically for some of them.

This draft provides for the intervention of the judge, purely formal, since he is not authorized to carry out an opportunity or fairness check on the transaction concluded with the prosecutor’s office.

In this regard, it is also clear that the draft did not actually take into account the remarks of the Constitutional Court. I think that this project, which saves the widespread criminal transaction, is really unbearable, and that it clearly introduces class justice in our country. The PTB will not support this project.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the colleagues for their constructive comments, and in particular the CDH and Mr. Maingain for abstaining from this important bill.

I am a little surprised that some colleagues find it ultra rapide when a Constitutional Court judgment is delayed 21 months before a law is amended. I would have loved to receive recommendations from the committee, Mrs. Lambrecht, you know that. However, I understood that the committee would not make any recommendations. This is clearly written to me by the President. I was then accused that I would lock this design through the Chamber in a strange way, after it received two lectures, Mr. Van Hecke, I find it a little strange. But if I do strange things, you may do strange things, let us agree on this.

I would have hoped that you ⁇ ’t use that word, because it puts me in a daylight that I may not fully deserve in this context. I patiently waited. You will have to admit that waiting for the conclusions of the Kazakhgate Commission requires some patience.

As for the substance of the case, I would like to say that there is a review by the court.

This is an easy comment, Mr. Brotcorne, but for the rest I thank you once again for your abstention. Oh, he is no longer there! Some have made the remarks, I will address those who are still present.

Mr. Van Hecke, I will say it in Dutch.

I’m glad you came back, Mr. Brotcorne! You saved my day. I said I was very grateful for your abstention, but at the same time I am a little disappointed by your comment. Once again, it is said that I am on the side of the prosecutor’s office because the criminal transaction will still be possible after the settlement of the procedure and before the decision in the first instance.

There, you will search far away! As Mr. Van Hecke rightly pointed out, I did not give in to the pressure. It was also the idea of the government to no longer have criminal transactions in the appeal phase. We supported this position. Now the judge must give an assessment and there is, too, advertising. We are no longer in secret: this case has become quite public.

Mr. Van Hecke, now I will come to your comment on the right of access. Indeed, the experts have proposed to conduct only one further investigation as part of a possible major reform of the criminal procedure. I realize that. Without a doubt, experts have good reasons for this. As long as this is not the case, we will have to ask ourselves what happens to the court of access, as we have now done, and we will have to ask ourselves what happens to the additional investigation. Maybe we will do that next time. It is most likely that the Constitutional Court states that acts of additional investigation will also be possible in the context of an investigation. That all will depend on whether the Parliament is able to formulate a religion about how a future criminal procedure should look.

Meanwhile, we have sought to bring about a reasonable equality between the right of access in the context of the investigation and the right of access in the context of the judicial investigation, and I hope that this new equalization will find grace in the eyes of the Constitutional Court.

Finally, I will come to the penalty and its amount. The Constitutional Court did not comment on this. This is a repair, where we have encrypted as little as possible. In the context of a wider reform of criminal law and criminal proceedings, I am in any case open to this.

Mr. Speaker, that is all I wanted to say in response to the questions of the colleagues, with repeated thanks for their dedication and attention.

Does anyone ask for the word?