Revealed: How the alleged Didier Reynders lottery laundering scam worked (or didn't)

euronews (in English)

Newly released National Lottery data shows how two suspicious accounts, presumably belonging to the ex-EU Commissioner and his wife, stuck out like a sore thumb, as they jointly splurged nearly €50,000 of lottery tickets in a year.

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00:00What do we know about money laundering allegations against Didier Reynders?

00:09The Belgian National Lottery has revealed new details about how suspicions of money laundering

00:16against former European Commissioner Didier Reynders first emerged.

00:21It all started back in 2021, when the Lottery's internal routine checks

00:27found that one point of sale, such as stores like this one in Belgium,

00:32had sold an unusually high amount of e-tickets.

00:36These are vouchers worth between 1 and 100 euros that a player can buy in store

00:42and then use to play the lottery online.

00:45The winnings are then eventually transferred into the user's own bank account,

00:50providing a potential way of laundering cash.

00:54The National Lottery launched an investigation which led them to two player accounts

00:59described as politically sensitive and believed to be held by Didier Reynders and his wife.

01:05According to the data shared by the National Lottery, in 2023 alone,

01:10these two suspected accounts spent as much as almost 50,000 euros on these e-tickets.

01:17According to Belgian media, there is now 1 million euros

01:21under investigation as part of the money laundering probe.

01:24Around 20% of it is believed to have been laundered through the National Lottery

01:29over the past five years.

01:31During those five years, Didier Reynders was serving as the EU's Justice Chief

01:37here in the European Commission.

01:39He denies all criminal charges against him,

01:43but the case does cast a long shadow of the prestige of this institution,

01:49which continues to deny that it knew anything about the charges against Reynders while he was in office.

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