Belgium’s Ministry of Justice published a database called “JustBan”, with information on around 10,000 management bans from the courts. Citizens of Belgium and the European Union will be able to access this information to identify “fraudulent entrepreneurs”.
Belgian entrepreneurs and businesspeople guilty of fraud and other financial crimes have much-increased exposure, thanks to the new online database designed to store their information. Normally, these businesspeople were sentenced to prison and in addition received a three to ten-year ban from working in management positions at any business. While the list of people serving bans was already privy to the Belgian police and official institutions, the government decided to make this list a matter of public access and record.
The Ministry of Justice published a press release on the 30th of October, assuring the measure is intended to “ensure that fraudulent entrepreneurs have fewer victims.” They communicated that the service, JustBan, available since the 20th of October, contains information about around 10,000 management bans being served. They announced that these bans will be progressively removed as bans expire or are reversed by the court.
They also announced that the information would be equally accessible to European Union citizens. The information on the bans will be added to the EU database of all business information, the Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS).
The bill to create a public register of financial offenders was initially proposed in 2022 by ex-Minister of Justice, Vincent van Quickenborne, who thought that administrative bans were not being enforced enough. He said the control over the bans was inadequate, leading to banned people taking advantage of more unsuspecting clients. He said a public register helps protect citizens and companies. The bill was promptly approved by the Council of Ministers.
Since his appointment on the 20th of October, Paul van Tigchelt, the new Minister of Justice, has become one of the faces of this initiative. Before his appointment, he was Quickenborne’s chief of staff. Tigchelt echoed Quickenborne’s idea that the current level of enforcement on administrative bans was insufficient and that the register would prevent further victims of fraud, using similar wording.
There have been reports of extensive fraud in Belgium, coming especially from the construction sector. In October 2021, Europol published a report on a joint police investigation of 20 construction subcontractors in Belgium, who hired immigrants brought by the Italian mafia, subjecting them to illegal working conditions. The total fraud was estimated to be 20 million euros (21 million dollars) by Europol.
In August 2022, the Borealis Group, one of the largest polyolefin producers in Europe, publicly announced they would be severing ties with a contractor called IREM, which was being investigated for human trafficking and “large scale social fraud.” They were working together on building a chemical plant which was allegedly being built by trafficked workers.
These are just some examples of a wider problem, which the European Commission’s European Social Policy Network reported in 2016, stating that Belgian contractors in the construction industry were receiving a significant number of seemingly unfair or suspicious offers from subcontractors.
A report from the air cargo industry came out in September 2023, about eight Belgian air cargo forwarders who were victims of a fraud scheme. A subcontractor approached these air cargo forwarders to organize the logistics process of exporting goods from India and Pakistan. According to the report, the subcontractors “behaved professionally” and “seemed impeccable” to the air cargo forwarders. However, once the subcontractor got paid, the company vanished and without delivering its services.
The ex-minister Quickenborne, who brought forward the idea, stepped down earlier this month because of an “inexcusable error,” in his own words, by ignoring an offer by Tunisia last year to extradite the undocumented immigrant who turned out to commit a terrorist attack on two Swedish people.
