In October 2008 Jean-Luc Dehaene became chairman of Dexia Bank, a Belgian-French bank. With the bank in problems due to the financial crisis, he was asked to lead the company through the difficult period. Because he has an extensive political background it is thought that he can cope with the negative perception of the financial institution Dexia due to the financial crisis.
Well that worked didn’t it. He failed, but is it really a surprise, as this erstwhile Belgian (born in Montpellier, France), twice Prime Minister of Belgium, has a history of rewarded failure at the highest level.
His second government was flooded with crises – most notably the Dutroux scandal, but during this period, for his work toward a unified Europe, Dehaene received the Vision for Europe Award in 1996.
In 1999 He joined the Board of Directors of Lernout & Hauspie where he was part of what is considered one of the largest corporate scandals in history prior to Enron.
For some time Lernout & Hauspie was dogged by rumours of financial impropriety, and in early 1999 the Wall Street Journal, ran allegations in its Heard on the Street column, by Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Smithson, that earnings had been overstated. Further investigation by Wall Street Journal staffer Jesse Eisinger led to the revelation on 8 August 2000 of a major financial scandal involving fictitious transactions in Korea and improper accounting methodologies elsewhere.
During March-April 2000 Lernout & Hauspie acquired Dictaphone for nearly US$1 billion, then acquired Dragon Systems shortly thereafter. Lernout & Hauspie provided the voice recognition technology needed to propel Dictaphone’s voice recognition enhanced transcription system (started by a company called Articulate Systems and sold and supported by a company called The MRC Group – later Fonix before becoming part of L&H).
Lernout & Hauspie finally went bankrupt on 25 October 2001 after having struggled for a year. Another failure for Jean-Luc Dehaene.
On 20 September 2010, co-founders Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, as well as Nico Willaert, former vice chairman, and Gaston Bastiaens, former chief executive officer, were each sentenced to 5 years prison (of which 3 years effective and 2 years probationary) for fraud by the Ghent Court of Appeals. However, due to the endemic problem of overcrowding in Belgian prisons and the policy of not executing sentences of 3 years or less, it is quite unlikely any of them will actually serve any time.
Surprisingly Jean-Luc Dehaene escaped unscathed and the technology ended up with Microsoft.
The rewards kept coming, to the surprise of many, only months after Lernout & Hauspie went bankrupt he was nominated by Guy Verhofstadt to become Vice Chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe, the forerunner to the Lisbon Treaty, working with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the grouping.
The Convention on the Future of Europe (officially the European Convention), was a body established by the European Council in December 2001 as a result of the Laeken Declaration. Inspired by the Philadelphia Convention that led to the adoption of the United States federal Constitution, its purpose was to produce a draft constitution for the European Union for the Council to finalise and adopt. The Convention finished its work in July 2003 with their Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.
That was a monumental failure, so much so that the EU had to make do with bribery and skullduggery to get the same wording into a convoluted Lisbon Treaty to get it ratified.
After the Belgian elections of 2007, Dehaene was appointed as mediator in the process to form a new government. Another notable failure.
Apart from his work at Dexia, he is now the chairman of Uefa’s Financial Control Panel. More scandal and failure.
Seems that wherever money and power come together in Belgium the chubby fingers of Dehaene are somewhere around, usually ending in rewarded failure.
The CEO and Chairman of Dexia have admitted that the bank operated as a hedge fund, and yet they are given serial bailouts at the taxpayers’ expense. It makes one wonder whether this man is a crook worthy of a high level investigation, or just another inept EU useful idiot, of which there are many.
h/t Ironies too
UPDATE: He’s gone, resigned as Chairman of Dexia. Let’s see where he pops up next…
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The word Eurosceptic has been hijacked by those who think reform from the inside is possible. Its not. 
