2023-12-28 16:59:14
The VRT announces this Thursday that the ethics committee of the Flemish Parliament is requesting additional information from State Security regarding the links between MP Filip Dewinter (Vlaams Belang) and China. The former strongman of the Flemish far-right party has been in the sights of the commission since the revelation of the affair surrounding his former party colleague Frank Creyelman.
The name of Filip Dewinter came back to the forefront last week,hen the Flemish daily Gazet Van Antwerpen, in the wake of the Creyelman affair, published an article explaining that the Flemish MP had brought some 10,000 mouth masks to Belgium at the time of the health crisis in 2020. This delivery would have been made thanks to the intermediary of Shao Changchun , expelled from Belgium in 2017. State Security then spoke of an attempt to interfere and influence decision-making processes in Belgium. Even espionage.
A complaint was then filed by Mieke Schauvliege (Groen), group leader in the Flemish Parliament. According to her, the press articles concerning Filip Dewinter “raise serious questions“. “A vice-president of the Flemish Parliament should be above suspicion“, she asserted.
Filip Dewinter denies the facts and claims that this is old information for which the courts have already cleared him. However, he admitted that he had received “allowances for dinners and for all kinds of expenses“.
The commission was therefore to meet today and examine whether the behavior of Filip Dewinter “is contrary to the code of conduct that Flemish MPs must respect“. But on leaving, the Groen parliamentarians felt that answers to their questions were still missing. Mieke Schauvlieghe, found the parliamentarian’s explanation “doubtful“. “We have an additional question that we will address to State Security“, declared the vice-president of the commission, Jeremie Vaneeckhout (Groen).
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