Ex-Belgian Leader Fined for Tax Fraud, Called Compulsive Cheat

BRUSSELS — Former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants was today given a three-year suspended sentence, fined $13,500 and branded a compulsive cheat at the end of a sensational tax fraud trial.

Vanden Boeynants, 67, a butcher who became a successful businessman and one of the country’s leading politicians, had pleaded not guilty on all counts.

“You owe it only to your past merits toward the country that the doors of jail remain closed for you,” District Court Judge Carlos Amores Martinez y Amore said, explaining the suspension of the jail sentence.

The verdict ended a case that made headlines as much for the scale of the alleged fraud as the colorful personality of Vanden Boeynants, nicknamed “the old crocodile” for his legendary tenacity in Belgian politics.

He was charged with 137 counts of dodging taxes through buying and selling stock in several companies, some of them “ghost companies,” in Belgium, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The total tax evasion has been estimated at about $4.4 million.

Vanden Boeynants, a member of the Christian Democratic Party, was prime minister from March 19, 1966, until June 17, 1968 and from Oct. 20, 1978, to April 3, 1979.