Delville-Fortiter.be
Intervention
Philippe Delville Brussels Consulting Group SA/NV - Managing Partner, Advisor of minority shareholders
Mobile : (+32) 476. 44. 73. 42 Courriel : [email protected] Intervention
Intervention of Mr Philippe Delville at the Ageas shareholders GM of April 29, 2015. (Summary presented at the GM - Complete text hereunder)
Dear Madam, Dear Sir,
Dear Partner in Ageas,
My name is Philippe Delville. For those who don’t know me I refer them to my portrait in the newspaper L’Echo of August 7 last year, last page, I was the 3d of a series of 5, called “les emmerdeurs des assemblées générales d’actionnaires” which I would translate by “these bluddy troublemakers at annual meetings of shareholders”. Actually in that series I was in very fine company such as that of André de Barsy, who like me does his homework of activist shareholder, or Eric Knight, of Knight Vinke Asset Management, who makes quick money out of his homework.
So rather than a “bluddy troublemaker”, please call me an activist shareholder who does his homework properly.
Because for me our Annual General Meeting is not just the price to pay to get to (otherwise) free buffets and bars : it is a working session which I have prepared with care, if not as cleverly as André, but certainly doing it the best I could.
And today, and more than ever before, I want you to benefit from the fruits of my homework.
If you are among those who come here only for the free buffets and bars, then you’ll have to wait another … minutes & … seconds more before getting to them. This is the exact time if have chronometered it will take for me to read a written presentation.
A written presentation copy of which will be given to 2 trustworthy newspapers, L’Echo & De Tijd, and through them to Bloomberg News, with a strict embargo until I read its very last word.
Once I have summarized it to you, I will hand over a complete copy of it to our Chairman of the GM and ask him to add in Appendix to the minutes of this GM; complete because I will not read its last paragraphs in this GM but jmmediately thereafter in a private meeting I will hold here; “private” because I will ask no press representatives to be present at it except the 3 medias I just mentioned whom I have given an exclusivity to.
Everything I will now tell you which is not in my written note will be in French and counted outside my time credit.
In no way will I exceed this time credit, even if you insist. If one of you is fed up with what I believe to have the duty to let you know, just get the attention of our Chairman, Mr De Mey : I trust him that by a simple majority vote of raising one hand (not 2 !), he will tell me if a majority of you wants me to stop.
If your vote is that I stop, I will obey right away to your sovereign decision. Simply I will keep what’s left unread of my written presentation for the private meeting I will hold here just after our GMs. Once my private meeting is itself adjourned, but not before, I will lift the embargo I have imposed on the 3 Medias. From then on, every one of you will be free to protect its/her/his interests as it/she/he wishes, including passing orders on stocks like ageas of course, and – why not ! - BNP Paribas.
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Now to set the stage, 4 initial remarks:
1. - For those who do not know me, my biographical note is in my website delville-fortiter.be (fortiter eaning here either “for the 3d time” or “courageously” in latin).
Please note I have deposited all my 9 shares (so 9 times more than our fellow shareholder DRS, the new name of Deminor, who deposited one to allow its M. Demoulin use the microphone # 1).
I indeed sold all my other Fortis SA/NV shares, which I had inherited from my wife (deceased in August 2000): they were sold at the end of 2007 at an average quotation around 15. - €.
Note also that my sons who also inherited shares from their mother did not follow the advice of their father and kept them. Even one of them, again contrary to the advice of the latter, subscribed to the September 2008 capital increase. They are in no way my principals here but I feel it a moral duty to help them recoup part of their huge capital loss.
2. - Worthwhile for you to know that I might be the only living Belgian citizen who has been twice declared fully insolvent : first, by the Court of appeal on an appeal filed on behalf of the French Government’s affiliate company GBL Suez by the law firm Simont Braun, an offspring of Stibbe ; second, in January 2014 by the Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) of Belgium which, for that reason, appointed Mr John Kirkpatrick, of the law firm Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck & Kirkpatrick, to assist me pro deo in the case
Being twice declared insolvent, I feel fully protected against the menaces of personal financial retaliation I have received ; so, if I stay within the limit of the law and the decency, being the poorer here, I am the stronger, which allows me in front of you “to call a spade, a spade” (in French : appeler un chat, un chat), thus not Mr “X”, but Mr so and so, be it Mr Filip Dierckx, Michel Pébereau or Didier Reynders ; thus making much easier for you to follow my presentation ;
3. - For your info, I act totally on my one and alone, as I have no obligation to any principal, except moral commitments, first, to my children and second to a gentleman living in WestVlaanderen, shareholder of its neighbor L&H, as he is the one who in May 2002 gave me the information against 4 of the 6 banks operating in Belgium, with the largest number of branch offices. After reviewing his material, I indeed found out the 4 banks had acted as “banksters” with the help of an international law firm to build what my informer called “a white collar hold up” to the detriment of the whole collectivity of Lernout & Hauspie shareholders, except the 2 (he said) crooks Jo Lernout & Pol Hauspie, with the active support of the whole so-called Vlerick Flemish lobby led by another (he said) crook, the former lawyer Louis Verbeke, until last year Chairman of the Vlerick Leuven School van Management in Ghent.
4. - You have noticed that just like last year, I went to the bureau of our GM : I confirm to you that my only goals of exercising what is just a straight right of a shareholder, are the following :
- before all, it allows me to find out how many friends I have present today :
- from the Report of Activities and the ageas website, you all know who does own 3 % or more of our company, that is: one Franklin Mut .Adv. with between 3 % and 5 % and 4, each with around 5 % : Ageas, Ping An, Schroders & Blackrock ; what I wanted to know is whom they gave their proxies to : I do now ; also whom other institutional investors gave their proxy to or through, like ISS : I know too ;
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- of course, what I do not know, is how they have instructed to vote.
the “BNPariLeaks” : a goldmine of pieces of evidence which I own
From the homework I have conducted since our last General Meeting in April 2014, I have gathered a mine of pieces of evidence which I now own on which to build a strong case with the wrongly called “Fortis SA/NV Case”, to rightly call the “Fortis Bank NV/SA-BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV Case” ; this goldmine is essentially composed of :
- intramails or e-mails exchanged within Fortis Bank-BNP Paribas Fortis more lately within BNP Paribas : some of them I have received, many others have been read to me with their precise sender/receiver identities & precise day, hour, minute ; one unique and very special feature of these is obvious : they all still are the possession of the 2 future defendants or, if they are no longer retrievable by them, it is because they have destroyed them, a recognition of their fault ; other evidences are testimonies already given to the investigating magistrate (juge d’instruction), Mr Jeroen Burm (now retired) or promised to me once I have filed my complaint to the court, or to be given on immediate request from the investigating magistrate, Mr Patrick Gaudious ;
- finally some other meaningful data are I do not own as they readily accessible on Internet, such as court decisions in Belgium, the Netherlands or the USA ; key words to get to them will be added to my present presentation to be filed in appendix to the official minutes of our present GM.
I will use one of these last pieces of evidence as epigraph to our working session here below.
As apex of my pyramidal presentation:
intramail within Fortis Bank NV/SA in the last week of August 2007 from its employees Mr David Moucheron to Mr Robert Scharf, quoted in the 82-page subpoena filed in Utrecht on July 2011 by the “Stichting Investor Claims Against Fortis”
(Point 64 - ftnt 38 (IR § 1441) - click “English translation Writ (0002878)”)
“For the external World, (…) it said: Although we have some US Sub-prime mortgage CDO exposure, we are convinced, based on our current assessment, that this will not have a material effect on our full year 2007 results.” (…) I think we should check with Filip/Karel that we can still keep this line, and how we ’enrich’ to address the liquidity issue (…)”.(bold print added by Investigators).
Now let’s go to our annual common working session.
First Act: to weave laurels to the 3 members of our GEC:
Sorry for those of you who hoped I would be the “bluddy troublemaker” they expected: no way, after having done my homework; what you also should have done and did not : indeed I have not seen a single one of you at the several hearings in the procedure against our company which I attended and where I learned a lot of what I am telling you today ;
So let me just be one activist shareholder who feels responsible (towards myself to start with), taking example the best I can from our fellow shareholder André de Barsy :
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Let me be very conventional by directing my first remarks towards you, the 3 people of our Group Executive Committee, running our company with your attention on 2 very different spheres of your competence:
1st sphere : our core business ; all 3 you are true professionals, 2 of insurance & 1 of the finance of insurance : without reserve I admire your clear vision both (1) geographically & (2) qualitatively there in terms of both (a) the kinds of risks to insure in those geographical areas and (2) the sound investment policy of our technical reserves ; particularly on your geographical vision : I happen to have more than an average knowledge of the area which the last 2 characters of ageas, a & s, refer to, Asia, and, thank God, preceded by a “e” for East Asia, showing indeed that you have both the so-called “green eye” and plain luck : a green eye: in China, where Ping An, your largest & most loyal shareholder comes from, being a non-state owned Chinese insurer quoted in HK: both a very fine insurer and a our most loyal fellow shareholder; who indeed has had the wisdom not to sue us, contrary to many of other fellow partners, who on dubious advices, have been blind enough to follow the sheep and did sue Ageas; also plain luck: in Thailand, our local operational partner, Muang Thai is tied to the Kasikorn Bank controlled by the Lamsam family; where luck comes into the picture is when HSBC, one of the banksters I will talk to you about later, forced of some divestment, chose to sell its 17 % in Ping An to the Thai Charoen Pokhand (CP) Group;
I agree, I have little merit to know that, simply as, in the late ‘60s, my father became a good friend of the patriarch at that time at the head of the Cheavaranont family which controls that CP group; to to those green eye and plain luck, one may add the specially friendly and effective personal contacts Mr De Mey has built in Asia from HK, including friendship with both the Chearavanont and Lamsam families, the competing wealthiest ones in Thailand and both of Chinese origin ;
2d sphere : the Fortis SA/NV’s heavy heritage management : over the last 3 years you 3 did thoroughly amazed me with the remarkable manner you are handling that unbelievably heavy heritage, you 3 remaining seemingly calm and nevertheless opportunistic in reducing its weight ;
That is why, In front of you, my fellow shareholders, I wish to extend my apologies to our Non-Executive Chairman Jozef De Mey and ask him to forgive me for the series of e-mails I sent him to tell him that I could not understand why our company had chosen Linklaters LLP for assisting it in the various procedures launched against our company by several hundreds of our fellow partner shareholders. I do not question here Linklaters’ lawyers’ astuteness nor cleverness, quite to the contrary, they are known to be among the shrewdest among the predatory law firms active in Belgium.
How do I know that Linklaters LLP has misbehaved?
First, a Partner and an Associate of the international law firm Linklaters LLP, Mssrs Verbist & Résimont, have acted and pleaded against me since 2004 until today on behalf of an old and recurrent client Fortis Bank- BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV of that law firm ; I thus personally know for sure that Fortis Bank NV/SA has been a client of Linklaters LLP for much longer than Ageas ; then being also present at some hearings of at least two of procedures launched against our company a few hundreds of our fellow shareholders, I discovered the hidden consequences of the conflicts of interests which develop within large, I will say too large, law firms : in those hearings, 3 concrete facts attracted my attention :
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1. - in the civil procedures launched by Ageas shareholders against their company, it would have been highly logical for BNP Paribas to ask their old and recurrent counsel, the law firm Linklaters LLP, to assist them: but no, they chose Buyle Legal ;
2.- more meaningfully : I observed at those hearings that the lawyers of Linklaters LLP did not object to that at all, exactly the opposite ; to the point I am convinced it was concerted : its lawyers indeed seemed more than pleased that their regular client for years, BNP Paribas, had chosen another counsel to defend itself against shareholders of Fortis SA/NV who were assisted by lawyers, that is, those of the law firm CMS- DeBacker for Deminor also Laurent Arnauts, Geert Lenssens, Mischaël Modrikamen and others, who most strangely filed lawsuits against both BNP Paribas Fortis and Ageas, thus throwing into the same basket the one guilty of the concealment, that is, Fortis Bank, and its victims, that is, Fortis SA/NV and all its shareholders ; yes, all of you, those already shareholders of Fortis SA/NV and also all the newer other ones, as BNP Paribas Fortis, with the complicity of its parent company since October 2008, is still concealing the trust to all till now;
3.- this is confirmed further in the appeal filed by ageas SA/NV + 3 former Fortis SA/NV executives v/ FSMA ; by attending 2 of those hearings, I realized that the lawyers pleading for FSMA all belonged to the law firm Stibbe ; quite meaningful for me because, sometime before, I had asked a partner of this law firm, Mr Bruno Maes, very familiar with the Jo Lernout & Pol Hauspie case, to defend me in front of the Supreme court ; after he had in principle accepted, he had to tell me he could not because Stibbe had Fortis Bank as client in social & labor matters ;
The conclusion is quite clear to me: in the ongoing appeal
Now here is the reason why I ask Mr De Mey to accept my sincere apologies: my attendance of 2 of the already 8 hearings in the appeal (ageas v/ FSMA), complemented with the quite good reports of the other 6 hearings I found in L’Echo, revealed to me, what I thought until then totally awkward, that BNP Paribas Fortis Bank and its most exposed executive, Mr Filip Dierckx, were not among the defendants in the first instance in that case now under appeal; my attendance to the 2 hearings also revealed to me that the decision to be pronounced by the Court of appeal, whichever it will be, has no real significance for you and I, all Fortis SA/NV shareholders looking for a
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compensation of their huge capital loss in direct causal link with the concealment by Fortis Bank NV/SA to all third parties from March 2007 until today of its solvency situation, which indeed was a true “Material Adverse Change” which thus occurred in May 2007; a so called “M A C” which would have allowed its parent company, Fortis SA/NV (I remind you not a bank), to contractually be allowed to pull itself out of the hostile take-over bid on ABN Amro and survive the deep but very short interbank credit crunch of September 2007; which would have kept intact our investment and thus gives an estimate of the awfully huge damage we suffered and will help you and myself claim from the (currently still solvent) BNP Paribas group.
Even more and quite amazingly, the absence of Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis in the case (FSMA v/ ageas) presents a very interesting - but, I am sure totally involuntary - consequence : if Fortis Bank had been among the defenders - as it should have been in this action filed by the FSMA - it would have inevitably interrupted the concealment by the bank from 2007 until now and thus created the risk of a delay of limitation (prescription) which we do not have thanks to that absence.
To make it quite clear to you : obviously, it will be so much better if the appellants obtain a reversal of the decision pronounced against them in the first instance court and in favor of the FSMA.
However, if the first decision were confirmed by the appeal court, it would only mean one thing for us: that the appellants are confirmed to be responsible of having released in May & June 2008 to the regulator CBFA/BCFA or the markets/investors, or both, a simply incorrect information. In no way a voluntarily misleading one, since they have been misled by Fortis Bank, as my BNPariLeaks show it!
In other words, there come into play the BNPariLeaks I have in my possession – which mostly are in the form of intramails and testimonies already received by the now retired investigating magistrate, Mr Jeroen Burm, or to be given on questions I will provide to the new one, Mr Patrick Gaudious: whatever the case, they provide evidence that Fortis-now ageas SA/NV has been grossly misled by Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV starting in March 2007 until today, thus prior & during the months of May & June 2008, the only period of time the appeal procedure v/ the FSMA applies to.
And here is my point vis-à-vis Mr De Mey: the fact that our Executive Committee chose for counsel in the procedure in appeal the precise recurrent counsel of Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV, our mate in distributing the products of our sub-subsidiary AG Insurance SA/NV and owner of 25 (sharp) % of it along the 75 % owned by our 100 % subsidiary AG Insurance International SA/NV, simply is… a stroke of genius !
Indeed it shows without the shade of a doubt to Mr Michel Pébereau and to his associates in Paris at BNP Paribas S.A. that our Group Executive Committee is the most loyal and dedicated partner (operationally and in capital) they in Paris could have ever dreamed of.
And we shareholders of Ageas should keep it that way: this is the reason I have made it a very strict duty of mine to keep our GEC totally foreign and unaware of the conclusions which my homework have conducted me to and the damage claim my efforts are geared to, you and myself acting as third parties, except in one case, that is, when we sit at our General Meetings either Annual or Extraordinary: my gsm and e-mails records are available to show it, in case need would be.
Second Act: Laurels to our fellow shareholder Ping An:
Among the 5 largest shareholders I mentioned earlier, Ping An is the only one of the 5 which, like many of us, has suffered a huge capital loss in Fortis SA/NV-ageas SA/NV shares they were still buying in mid-2007, thus when our Fortis SA/NV were still cheated by Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis, thus when it still could invoke
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the “Material Adverse Change” to pull out of the TOB on ABN Amro, pull-out which, as I said, would have completely saved Fortis Bank, consequently also its non-banking mother company & ourselves, from the disaster Mr Didier Reynders carved by himself in the first 3 weeks of September 2008 as I will explain to you later.
But before that, I have a question to you: Ping An not joining those among us who have found clever to sue our company, didnt it ever pinch one of your ears?
For sure, Mr De Mey has built a great network of personal relationships in Asia; but I know from my direct sources in Bangkok that it is not enough for a wealthy and competitive family such as the Chearavanont (remember 1stshareholder of Ping An, itself 1st shareholder of Ageas) to erase an estimated 8-billion USD of capital loss which its 16 % controlled Ping An suffered by still investing in it just 4 months before the Fortis Bank collapse bringing about its parent’s one.
The fact remains for our Chinese, and subsequently Thai, fellow shareholding investor: after a painful overall assessment of their (in 2007 still fresh) relationship with Fortis-now ageas SA/NV, they have kept their full trust in our professional team at the helm of that Eurasian insurer.
The international arbitration at the ICSID in Washington DC:
Part of my homework of activist shareholder has been to get familiar with the arbitration procedure launched by Ping An in Washington DC at the ICSID; with my same concern as before about the law firms involved there; to my knowledge, so far no problem: in Washington DC, the Belgian law firm assisting the KofB is Liedekerke WWK, where the very competent Mr Hamid Boularbah is in charge ;
The Magritte-Delvaux surrealistic aspect of that ongoing international arbitration procedure stroke me : just listen ; in it, the Washington law firm of our Chinese fellow shareholder invokes, with the political support of the PRC, a 41-year old Bilateral Investors Protection Treaty, signed between the PRC and the KofB on 6/4/84, to - at least that was in the Belgian minds at that time - protect Belgian investors in China against the risk (at that time !) of arbitrary nationalization by the PRC.
Mr Didier Reynders - who from 1999 to 2011 was Federal Minister of Finance, thus, long before he so often parades on TV just behind the Royal couple as Minister of Foreign Affairs – certainly did not have this treaty in mind when he maneuvered on his single own in September 2008 to have Fortis Bank fall into the hands of the only buying party he decided to put on stage and then retain on it making BNP Paribas the only one left - that is without a single competitor – to swallow our banking subsidiary at the indecently low price he himself alone forced our company to accept.
2 Ping An companies are involved in the arbitration in Washington and have come up with an 8 billion USD claim against the Federal Belgian Government, meaning you & myself.
Exclusively and strictly on my own, I have made informal efforts with the Thai investor family in Ping An : with minor results so far but not totally negligible : as there is no link between that arbitration procedure and any procedure engaged here by other fellow shareholders to compensate the damage suffered by the collectivity of all Ageas shareholders, thus including Ping An ; I have stressed to the latter’s Thai 1st shareholder the direct causal link existing between our damage and the concealment committed by Fortis Bank-BNP Paribas Fortis’ since March 2007 and still ongoing ; at the ICSID, it is the KofB which is the respondent ; thus there is no risk whatsoever to have a non bis in idem situation ; accordinlgly if Ping An’s huge capital loss were compensated by (the still today solvent) BNPP, Ping An could at once drop their claim of a settlement form the KofB.
By the way, their claim of 8 billion USD for 5 % of ageas SA/NV would bring the stockmarket capital value at 180 billion USD: quite worthwhile to claim my moral damage and possibly your loss by using BNPariLeaks I have collected and will still collect.
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For that, let me now proceed with the more unpleasant part of my presentation.
Third Act: Our being confronted with banksters, predatory law firms, greedy politicians & complacent regulators:
So far in my presentation to you, I have been relieved to cover deeds of physical (mental as well!) persons who showed together decency, civil sense of responsibility, accountability and professional as well as human ethics.
While getting deeper and deeper in my homework, I have had to remind me that, particularly in environments 100 % manmade, human actors find themselves often confronted with a possible choice between good and evil (with the wordplay in written (not spoken) English : God and Devil) ; in banking, frequent situations occur which present very tempting possibilities of situations which Europeans have translated by “not seen, not caught” from the American bankers’ slightly softer say “what is not legally forbidden is permitted” ; especially true today with sophisticate derivative (deviant) instruments, algorithmic processes, libor & euribor easy manipulations, high frequency telecoms, and so on, creating situations laws take some time to tackle.
In the wrongly called “Fortis case”, actually the “Fortis Bank case”, as I was proceeding in my homework, it became clearer and clearer to me that first Fortis Insurance SA/NV, then its parent company Fortis SA/NV and ultimately the shareholders of that one have been the victims of 4 actors who had often kept hidden their “individual priorities” : it is the euphemism used by Ms Lutgart Van den Berghe, head of the lobby of corporate directors Guberna, closest associate of Mr Louis Verbeke at the Vlerick Leuven School of Management, whose numerous Alumni (one becomes one of them after just a seminar of 5 days) compose the so-called Vlerick Flemish lobby ; with her vague concept, she means selfish objectives such as money in one’s pocket, promotion bringing higher compensation, etc. ; and in the case here, whatever the cost or damage suffered by others.
In the “Fortis Bank Case” indeed, some victims may have been cumulatively prejudiced by 4 types of such individuals motivated by strictly “individual priorities” whatever the damage these selfish priorities caused to people around them and the civil society as a whole, their falling in 4 categories:
Banksters - Partners in predatory law firms - Greedy politicians - Complacent regulators:
Preventive Note: as in all human sectors, you have white and black sheep: as I have told you, I am in a insolvent situation where I can call “a cat, a cat” (they say “a slade, a slade”) and for me this goes both ways also positive; so before proceeding, I want to pay my respect to some of the white sheep: among bankers : Mr. Luc Vandewalle, who all alone managed, in spite of unbelievable pressures from the Vlerick Flemish lobby, to prevent BBL-now ING from following 4 of the largest “Belgian” banks in the “white collar hold up” imagined by the lawyers of one of them in exploiting the L&H collapse in their own interest : he does merit the baron title, but then that title should be taken back from certain people who recently got it, the Marie-France Botte type ; also Mr Max Jadot, a fine and professional banker, before he found himself trapped in the delicate situation he now is as member of BNP Paribas’ Executive Committee and CEO of their Belgium so-called “Domestic market” ; at a lower echelon, Mr Philippe Triest, Head of Risk at Fortis Bank
NV/SA until 12/31/06 and his Associate Ms Sylviane Delcuve and her sensible courageous (not appreciated at the Dierckx’s level!) attitude in November 2006 and again February 2007; among lawyers : Mr Hakim Boularbah, esq., Partner in the law firm Liedekerke WWK, teaching civil procedure at a Brussels university and assisting the SFPI/FPIM in
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impressed me : the president of a court asking the help of one of the defendants’ lawyers ; Mr Bruno Maes, esq., Partner at Stibbe, who very badly wanted to assist me at the Supreme court in the Fortis Bank-L&H case, and could not by his strict respect of a conflict of interests ; Mr John Kirkpatrick, esq., Founding Partner of Liedekerke WWK, who was imposed by the Supreme Court to assist me free of charge and produced a 20-page opinion recommending me not to ; Mr Marc van der Haegen, esq., of NautaDutilh, who I had against me assisting Viscount Etienne Davignon in the Tractebel quotation maintenance prospectus penal case which I half won ; all fine people ; among politicians : Mr Philippe Lamberts, EU Representative (Green) who sponsored the very straightforward pamphlet “7 capital sins of the banks” and his fellow Federal Representative Mr. Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo-Groen) who is a very effective member of the parliamentary commission of finances and went to confront Mr Reynders with his “individual priorities” ; among regulators : while I have major criticisms towards the head (“governor”) of the BNB/NBB which I will develop for you later, his 2 associates in charge of the micro-prudential control of banks operating in Belgium deserve all my respect, while “obeying to orders coming from above” expressing their regret not to be allowed to dig in the archives relating to the contacts between Fortis Bank & the CBFA/CBFA when Mr Servais was responsible for the micro-prudential control of the banks, which he cleverly managed to avoid in the ongoing appeal
Unfortunately, I now have to deal with the black sheep in these 4 categories of individuals:
1. - Banksters:
In 2015 there is no need any more of a general explanation to the new word “bankster”, a contraction of the words banker & gangster.
In the “Fortis Bank Case”, “BNPariLeaks I have collected, and particularly those lately brought to my attention, especially from France, provide the bricks to place that case on the right tracks as a textbook case of illegal deeds committed by bankers.
But also other cases involving the same actors come to my mind and add outside examples of the phenomenon at play with BNP Paribas Fortis & BNP Paribas; such as the followin:
Lawsuit in gestation “Delville v/ Belfius, KBC, BNPPF, Deutsche Bank, Linklaters, et al.”:
In May 2002, “bankster” not being a common expression yet, it took some time for this gentleman from WestVlaanderen, as shareholder of LHSP victim of (he said) 2 crooks intellectually (knowing perfectly that their automatic translation softwares were - he said - “plain bullshit” which I translate for you by “still pure fiction”), as financially & morally, that is, Jo Lernout & Pol Hauspie, assisted in the ‘90s by Mssrs Louis Verbeke (their mate for years when founding partner of the law firm Loeff, Claeys Verbeke, asked later to leave the Ghent & Brussels Bars), Stefaan Decraene (their banker since 1988, today on the Executive Committee of BNP Paribas which he joined in the summer of 2011, just a month before Dexia’s collapse) & Johan Verbist (lawyer of the banker since 1998) in (what he said to be) a “white collar hold up” mounted in 2000 by stealing in these 4 banks’ own benefit all Dictaphone Inc. shares from the collectivity of all L&H shareholders, to convince me to open a file bearing the title “Fortis Bank & L&H”.
Details of this case will be provided on demand at the private meeting held after the GM.
Case “BNPP v/ 6 US judiciary & regulatory agencies ending in a 8.7 billion USD penalty”:
Internet has provided to everyody a substantial amount of evidence on this case ; in addition I have received, or have been promised to receive, further BNPariLeaks on the form of intramails within BNP Paribas
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showing that the case was followed very closely by BNPP’s Non-executive Chairman, Mr Michel Pébereau, who really stayed on top of everything since 1993 until next May 13,from the visit paid in Paris by a very high ranking civil servant of the USofJ in 2006 and when BNPP had no choice from 2009 on but to accept cooperating with the US authorities by providing millions of data until 2011 ; when all these data were gathered, BNPP’s Chairman knew perfectly well that the estimated US penalty risk for BNPP could reach up to 16 billion USD ; the only road he chose was to cross fingers, hope that the US federal authorities would not dare to levy that penalty & may unilaterally reduce it and in the meantime let’s … cheat everybody ; which BNPP did, according to “BNPariLeaks” I possess, thus with the full knowledge of its Chairman and his “Chairman’s Adviser(s)” ;
More details at the private meeting which follows.
Case “BNPP v/ the US DofA” penalty of 84 million USD in Houston on 8/24/13:
Even though the amount of the penalty BNPP was condemned in this case was way below the one just quoted, its meaning in terms of the internal culture at work within BNPP is much more meaningful for investors, clients & regulators : here it is a full fledge fraud involving bribes committed by a Corporate Banking Officer in charge of Commodities at the BNPP’s Houston branch acting in the straight course of its core business ; it shows that the principle of “not seen, not caught” (translated by bankers among themselves at BNPP Paris with a discrete smile by “bona fide”) was widely at work in BNPP worldwide ; here also “BNPariLeaks” (as internal pieces of evidence) show that the situation was already well known at the Paris headquarters by the end of 2011 and totally and tightly kept hidden when Mr “Jerry” Cruz pleaded guilty for fraud & bribes on 1/12/12 and is still facing a penal procedure;
More details at the private meeting which follows.
Summons in gestation “Delville v/ BNPF, BNPP, Linklaters, Filip Dierckx et al.”:
This is indeed the core of my presentation; this is indeed the case resulting from the still ongoing concealment from at the latest March 2007 by Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV, and since October 2008 with the complicity of BNP Paribas S.A., its parent company first of 74,93 (with the KofB as a minority shareholder of 25 % + 1 share) then of 99,93 %, when Minister Koen Geens sold this qualified minority at a sold off price.
A beam of multiple convergent pieces of evidence including intramails exchanged within Fortis Bank-now BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV represents the bricks of this case for demonstrating the uninterrupted concealment by the bank of the illiquidity of his billions of € invested until October 5, 2007 in sub-primes and other CDOs bought outside or fabricated in NYC for the only explainable reason of building a false foundation of personal bonuses distributed among the personnel in one particular Division of the bank headed by Mr Dierckx.
A great number of the “BNParLeaks” drive any conscientious reader to conclude of the causal responsibility of this person, Mr Filip Dierckx, whose thirst for bonuses made him blind of anything but the base of its variable remuneration; the fact that he is still COO of BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV means that his personal responsibility is fully endorsed by his employer for at least the past 2 decades, with the complicity of its parent company, another bank since (not prior) October 2008.
The intramail I put earlier at the apex of our pyramidal working session is one among others which provides evidence that Mr Dierckx, with the perfectly aware though cowardly passive support of his colleague Mr Karel De Boeck, is the executive in Fortis bank primarily responsible of having concealed the true solvency situation of the bank which both “Filip/Karel” knew was enough of a “
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Thus Mr Dierckx is personally accountable to the collectivity of all Fortis-now ageas SA/NV shareholders for their huge capital loss, in a direct causal link with the fault Mr Dierckx committed from latest February 2007 to October 2008: one minimum compensation to claim from him is to redeem all his bonuses, or variable portion of his total remuneration, from 2004 until at least 2008.
Beside the “BNPariLeaks”, evidence of Mr Dierckx’s personal accountability exist on Internet : such as the 11 Exhibits in the Royal Park Investment’s summons of 7/27/11 or the decision on Christopher Copeland vs Fortis Bank, Dierckx et al. which are referred to in my website
My summons is still in gestation as it must be expanded to other defendants including among the legal entities BNPP Fortis, BNPP, Linklaters, BNB/NBB and among the physical persons Mr Dierckx ;
The complete list of the future physical person defendants is in preparation and will appear in the part of my presentation which I will not read to you in our GM to preserve the presumption of innocence as we do not have the status of “assisted witness” in Belgium; however the list will be included in the copy of this presentation I will ask it to be in appendix of the minutes of our GMs.
2. - Predatory law firms:
Here again I will indicate other cases than the one which is the core of my presentation but in which actors in that one are also actors of those which follows :
In a summons in gestation
I presented to you this case earlier : it is about a “white collar hold up” committed in 2000 by 4 banks active in Begium and one in Luxembourg to the prejudice of the collectivity of all shareholders owning Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, of course non included Mssrs Lernout é Hauspie who were among those heavily condemned.
3 people among the physical persons involved in this case are at the roots of it: I have already mentioned them to you; in the 3, 2 were acting as outside legal counsels;
Mr Louis Verbeke, already presented to you, who was closest to the 2 founders and perfectly knew that the NV had no product whatsoever to sell in the foreseeable future in early 2000;
It was the full IT bubble and the L&H stock was still quoting on the NASDAC above 42.- USD ; close to Mr Verveke, another lawyer, Mr Verbist was counseling Mr Decraene at Artesia Bnkng Corp since 1998 ; the 2 recommended to the 3d to implement a very clever way, allow me to qualify it shrewd and plainly dishonest, to extend a 350 million USD line to the ailing company to buy Dictaphone at a price half stock/half cash ; honest lawyers and bankers would have set up a credit based on a pledge of the Dictaphone stock acquired by L&H ; Messrs Verbeke & Verbist instead recommended to Mr Decraene to act differently to lure all this stock away from the L&H stockholders to the “banksters” ;
Details if wanted in my private meeting to follow here our 2 GMs.
In the summons in gestation constituting the core of my presentation (delville (possibly et al.) v/ BNPP Fortis, BNP Paribas, Linklaters, Dierckx et al.):
The full responsibility of the defendants is fully engaged here as “my” BNPariLeaks indicate;
Already pieces of evidence readily available on Internet provide the material documents which demonstrate it: such as the summons of Royal Park Investment filed in NYC on 7/27/12 or the final decision in NYC on 2/18/10 (see my website
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Bank & Mr Dierckx and won the case by showing that M. Dierckx was totally rrsponsible in Brussels so that the NY Judge had no territorial competence.
More details at my private meeting which follows our GM.
3. - Greedy politicians:
In cases not related to the one which is at the core of my presentation:
In the case Suez-SGB/Tractebel : Mr Guy Verhofstadt :
Between September 4 till October 6, 1999, I was the only Belgian citizen to have acted against this litigious take over bid of Suez-SGB on Tractebel in an urgent procedure I won on October 22, 1999, only joined on October 6 by 16 employees of Tractebel, unionized and shareholders, led by Mr Mischaël Modrikamen.
On October 6, 2006, Mr Guy Verhofstadt sent a private letter to Mr Mestrallet illegally committing the ”Federal State” not to change the tax status of the Suez group before 1/1/10.
All this, including the letter verbatim, is on page 177 in Mssrs Joan Condijts & Feryel Gadhoum’s book on “GDF Suez fusion”.
Based on these publicly available data, I filed a complaint against Mr Verhofstadt regarding this illegal gesture, in the hands of Mr Marc de le Court, the only magistrate competent in this case in Belgium. The matter is still pending.
One page before, thus 176, the authors explain how, on October 27, 2006, the Minister received the active complicity of Mr Jean-Pierre Hansen to fool the EU Commissary Ms Nelly Kroes. The same individual is described by the 2 authors on page 239 to have obtained from the “Chamber of Council” a ruling of “guilty but not condemned” for the Chamber stated “compassion” reasons, in the hacking in Electrabel with 3 “plumbers” sent from Paris by Mr Patrick Ouart who later became the adviser on… Justice of Mr Sarkosy, Only penalty for Mr Hansen: he was dismissed from his “regent” seat at the BNP/NBB and made baron, I suppose to force him to behave better in the future.
It is also by compassion that some time before, in the last minutes of the hearing at a penal court, when its Chairwoman offered me a last remark that I did not let her observe tant Mr Hansen had lied to her while pretending there was a sworn stenographer at the Electrabel shareholders’s General Meeting where he insulted me.
In the case of abuse by GDF Suez of its dominant position: Mr Van Rompuy:
In November 2009, Mr Herman Van Rompuy, Federal prime minister, was campaigning actively to become the 1st permanent Chairman of the Council of heads of EU national governments.
The decision had to be taken on Thursday 11/19/09 and HVR badly needed Nicolas Sarkosy’s endorsement. He thus asked to come and visit NS who did not accept to receive him at l’Elysée but directed him to Matignon where he told him he would be received by the Prime Minister Mr François Fillon. Actually this did not happen exactly the way HVR expected it: when he entered the room at Matignon there not only one person to greet him, but 2: for sure, Mr Fillon but accompanied by… Mestrallet.
Two days later, HVR got the endorsement of Sarkosy bringin that o Ls Merkel & 25 others.
But since that 11/17, nobody has heard of the 12 billion € (as estimated by professor Eric De Keukeneer) Suez through Electrabel headed since 1992 by Mr Jean-Pierre Hansen has stolen to the Belgian private consumers
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of electricity while not reducing their tariffs in line with the depreciation charges on the 7 nuclear reactors which started to decline in fiscal year 1996, as written commitments stated it.
In the case at the core of my presentation: Mr Reynders:
BNPariLeaks here provide most of the evidence;
However one witness is still to be reached : that is, the chauffeur of the Federal Minister of Finance in September 2008, Mr Didier Reynders ; so far it has been gathered by another chauffeur and thus is not to be considered reliable ; but facts publicly known are enough to proceed ; they are as follows :
According to this witness still to get confirmed &/or materialized, Mr Reynders would have met someone from BNP Paribas Paris in Sint Genesius Rode during the 1st half of September : 4 possibilities among Mssrs : Pébereau (most unlikely), Jacques de Larosière, Jean Lemierre (advisers of the former), François Prot, Jean- Laurent Bonnafé (both unlikely) ;
Whatever this meeting, and between whom it was held, its consequences are known:
- Mr Reynders right away discarded all idea of a stand-alone:
- He decided to look himself for a potential buyer of Fortis Bank NV/SA;
- He imposed to our company, not a bank, to open 2 data-rooms with all data on Fortis SA/NV, Fortis Bank NV/SA & Fortis Insurance SA/NV;
- He limited the number of parties claiming to be potential buyers “by appartments”, that is, 2 insurance companies, just curious, the SFPI/FPIM and 2 banks, one, ING, only too happy to know the inside of its all- time competitor & with no intention whatsoever to buy the bank; thus, Mr Reynders extending the red carpet to the only possible “amateur” of the bank, BNP Paribas S.A., Paris;
- He accepted the price proposed by the only buying candidate left : being alone, and negotiating with such a friendly vis-à-vis, there was no negotiation at all : BNP Paribas knew they had to quote the lowest price allowing its friend Mr Reynders to waive the hand with not too much trouble.
We are several to investigate what were the “personal priorities” inspiring Mr Reynders in giving away a sound bank as it was and quickly back as such, once the short interbank credit crunch over.
Also in the core of my intervention: Mr Geens:
In November 2013, as then the Federal minister of Finance, Mr Koen Geens announced that he would sell the remaining 25 % of Fortis Bank renamed BNP Paribas Fortis to its majority shareholder BNP Paribas.
In his press release, he concealed to all that actually he was selling also one extra share which prevented until then BNP Paribas to have any mean to reach the “qualified majority” (in Belgium 75 %). He fooled everybody in the press local and international, claiming that the 3.23 billion € for this sale was a very generous price from the buyer, as generous as its sponsorship (free service of one of its subsidiary) of the Magritte Museum.
Actually, those 3.25 billion € were an indecently low price for the Belgian # 1 and again a fully sound bank: the sale of the minority of 25 % + the “golden” share should have been at least twice higher.
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4. - Complacent regulators:
Again a case outside the core of my intervention: Mr Tony Vandeputte
In another case which I conducted for my own account and for 58 other shareholders of Tractebel, I had the need to review the effectiveness of the “Control Committee of Natural Gas & Electricity”.
With the help of professor Eric De Keuleneer, Head of the Advisers appointed in 1999 by the prime minister Verhofstadt to advise him in the EU imposed “liberalization” of the gas and electricity sectors, advices he never took into account, I indeed discovered that this Control Committee never acted in the interest of the energy consumers but only in the corporatist interest of the employers and the unionized workers of these sectors.
Even more, Mr Tony Vandeputte whom Mr Hansen (Head of Electrabel which covered 85 % of the 2 sectors’ capacity) chose every other year to replace him at the head of the Committee when it was to the employer(s) to chair it, simply apply the instructions received and agreed upon by unions and employers in the totally and exclusively corporatist vision agreed upon by Mr Hansen.
Professor De Keuleneer has repeatedly signaled that Electrabel did not comply to the rules and commitments it had formally agreed upon: starting fiscal year 1996, the very short depreciation period (20 years v/ an economic life of 40) started to reduce the depreciation charges on the 7 nuclear reactors, the resulting huge cost saving was not translated in lower tariffs to the consumers’ whose higher ones started in 1975 at finance the reactors.
Actually the professor estimates that 12 billion € have been kept by Electrabel-Suez from 1996 to 2006, thus which plainly stole them for Suez where Mr Mestrallet invested them in his hazardous adventures in distribution and treatment of water in the USA which cost them 4 billion USD to comply to his then “multi- utilities” strategic policy.
In the core of my presentation: 2 complacent behaviors by regulators:
I have already covered them:
Mr Servais at the CBFA & FSMA: his complacency I have covered earlier
Mr Luc Coene at the BNB/NBB:
I have mentioned Mr Coene’s instructions to his 2 associates in charge of the micro-prudential control of the banks operating in Belgium that they not get into the archives regarding this control for the period prior to August 2011 of their moving from the former CBFA to the BNB/NBB.
Back to the core of My presentation:
Immediately following our General Meetings I will hold exactly here a private meeting where the press will not be present to the shareholders interested to know more about my presentation.
Data to be given to you during that private meeting: for those of you who wish it, I will give them more details of the summons in gestation which will be filed in court against primarily BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV, BNP Paribas S.A. and Linklaters LLP and physical persons related to them whose precise identity I will keep until then.
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With all required discretion, I believe that these details should nevertheless be filed with the copy of my presentation in appendix of the minutes of our General Meeting. So here they are:
At BNP Paribas Fortis SA/NV: Filip Dierckx: from March 2007 and on Karel De Boeck: from 1/1/07 to 10/31/07 Robert Scharf; from 1/1/08 to 2011
At BNP Paribas S.A.: Michel Pébereau: from 1993 to 5/13/15 Jean Lemierre: from 7/24/08 to present Maxime Jadot: from 201 to present
At Linklaters LLP: Johan Verbist (now Omega Law)
At the Federal Ministry of Finance and at the SFPI/FPIM: Didier Reynders: til 2011 Koen Geens: in November 2013
At the FSMA: Jean-Paul Servais
At the BNB/NBB: Luc Coene
Further use of this detailed presentation:
1. - My presentation will be filed with the minutes of our present General Meeting:
Thus it will be accessible to the members of our Board and of the Group Executive Committee
Also accessible to all of us shareholders allowed to go through the minutes of our General Meetings including all their appendices;
2. - My presentation will also be placed on my website
For overall transparency purposes, my presentation will be placed on my website
The selective access to “my” BNPariLeaks
The summons in gestation
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our company, i.e., not a bank, to pull out of the hostile take over bid which Merrill Lynch International Ltd presented to it by joining 2 banks, Santander and RBS, in a financial operation which was announced on May 29, 2007.
Pieces of evidence: BNPariLeaks and others
Some pieces of evidence accessible to everyone are placed on my website
Aside from those pieces of evidence, all BNPariLeaks are and remain my property and will be accessible only to those former Fortis SA/NV and new ageas SA/NV shareholders who accept the terms of a contractual relationship with me, terms which for the sake of fairness among all concerned will be placed on my website in due course.
A further restriction however:
Presently being still all alone to handle the summons in gestation, I have put a floor for those I will share my BLPariLeaks with, that is, those who alone or in concert deposited a minimum of 30,000 ageas SA/NV shares at our General Meetings held on April 29, 2015 and, for the old Fortis SA/NV shareholders and those shares an equivalent floor which I shall decide with them on a case by case basis.
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