Carolorégienne affair
political and financial scandal in Belgium
The Carolorégienne affair was a political scandal which took place in Belgium between 2005 and 2007. Court cases implicated personalities of the municipal government in the city of Charleroi.
In October 2006, mayor Jacques Van Gompel of the Socialist Party (PS) was jailed on fraud and forgery charges. Léon Casaert, also of the PS, became the new mayor, elected by PS, Reformist Movement (MR) and Humanist Democratic Centre (cdH) majorities. The MR resigned from the coalition just before the 2007 Belgian federal election, citing official charges of corruption leveled against a PS alderman in Charleroi.
The affair had implications at the local, regional and even national levels. Elio Di Rupo, president of the Socialist Party, attributed the defeat of his party in the 2007 Belgian federal election to the scandal. After the 2007 general election, the PS placed the Charleroi local party section under the supervision of Paul Magnette, with the city executive resigning. Mayor Casaert was charged with fraud on 18 June 2007, but only stepped down after a new city executive had been formed.
On 16 August 2007, 33 people were charged in different cases by the investigating judge.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carolorégienne affair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.