Our editorial team gathered the direction of the Minister responsible for Bpost, Petra De Sutter (Groen), Minister of Public Enterprises. She took note of the internal audit whose existence she welcomes. “It shows a willingness to want to continue in another way, to really change the culture“, she points out. “The people who were responsible were all fired last year, already“, she recalls. But, she specifies, there is still an investigation by the prosecution and the Competition Authority. “This means that there are still consequences and follow-ups that will be given to this case.“, she adds.
Petra Sutter also specifies the role of the Belgian State in relation to this affair. Admittedly, the State is the main shareholder of Bpost, a public company. But in this file, where it is a question of the market for the distribution of newspapers, the State is the one who pays one of the companies which responded to the call for tenders, whether it is Bpost or another private company. “Here, we are really in a concession, like a third party vis-à-vis a private or public company. And there, since there was formation of a cartel and things that are not legal, we must also position ourselves in relation to that“, explains the minister and see “if there was too high a price paid for the concession“. It will therefore be necessary to see whether the price paid by the State for the distribution of newspapers is a correct price.