New finance minister named

Belgium has appointed Koen Geen as finance minister after Steven Vanackere stepped down unexpectedly yesterday. Defence minister Peter Crem will take on the post of deputy prime minister which Vanackere also held, a statement from the palace said. Geens, 55, is a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain where he specialises in corporate financial law. Vanackere resigned yesterday after being linked to a scandal concerning Belfius bank, Belga news agency said. Vanackere denied any wrongdoing in an affair regarding the bank and a social organisation linked to his Flemish Christian-democrat CD&V party, the agency added. Vanackere, 49, was given the finance portfolio in December 2011 when prime minister Elio Di Rupo formed a coalition government after an almost two-year political vacuum during which Belgium remained in the hands of a caretaker government. He served as foreign minister in that government for two years. His name came up in the press over the January buyback by Belfius – formerly Dexia Banque Belgique – of €110 million worth of shares owned by two social organisations linked to his party, against a loan at preferential terms of 6.25% interest, plus a discrete 1.5% bonus. The press said the deal had been negotiated through a Belfius administrator who occasionally worked out of the minister’s office.

(AFP)