Does the statute of limitations save construction group Cordeel from conviction? ‘However, it is not a complex matter’

There are few construction companies in our country whose logo is as well known as the red ‘C’ of Cordeel. Few are as large as the East Flemish group. Originally founded in 1934 by nineteen-year-old Ghislain Cordeel as a carpentry company, the group is now active in six European countries, with 1,800 employees and almost 940 million euros in turnover per year. The modern main building that was built five years ago across the Scheldt in Temse exudes that grandeur.

In 2007, the court questioned the foundations of that success. Justice suspected the company and current CEO Filip Cordeel of social fraud involving several millions. Cordeel Group seemed built on evading social security contributions and undeclared work. This allowed them to work below market prices.

After five years of judicial investigation, Cordeel had to appear before the council chamber in 2012. Only now, another twelve years later, has the Dendermonde council chamber ruled that all fifteen charges in the file have expired. If the federal public prosecutor’s office does not appeal, or is unsuccessful, the nearly 30 defendants will go free.

Social law professor Yves Jorens (UGent) calls it “a shame” that the file has expired. “Certain major issues, even though there are many research difficulties, you have to be able to set a kind of example and therefore tackle effectively to show the outside world: look, you can’t just escape from this.”

The little one and the Pope

However, the charges were serious: forgery, embezzlement, money laundering, tampering with bankruptcies,… The key figure in the RSZ fraud is the 58-year-old businessman JD from Aalter. The Cordeel company still maintains that it is “clean on the bone”, but the victim of “dubious subcontractors”, such as JD

According to the investigators, on the other hand, the suspects themselves talked about ‘the Cordeel system’. According to investigators, under Filip Cordeel (53), the construction company acted like a criminal organization, including aliases such as ‘the big’, ‘the small’ or ‘the pope’, so that names were hidden from those lower in rank.

Filip Cordeel obtained with JD that subcontractors would work at a particularly low rate of 27.27 euros per hour. Workers were paid the rest in the black. Fraud was also alleged to have been committed with sickness and unemployment benefits. The subcontractors kept going bankrupt, so that the RSZ came knocking in vain for the overdue contributions.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the entire Cordeel system has allowed dumping prices to be charged. The investigators estimated the profit the company made from 2005 to 2007 at an amount between 4.5 and 5.5 million euros. Cordeel disputes this, but previous calculations were even several million euros higher.

The impact of the research was not small for the company at the time. After the house searches in 2007, Filip Cordeel spent 21 days in prison. His uncle Dirk Cordeel stepped aside as chairman of the Construction Confederation, the current Embuild. That is the organization that represents the major construction companies in this country.

The main question is: how can such a large file, in which millions of euros have probably been committed fraud, simply expire?

“This is not a complex case with foreign money flows,” says a source who knows the file well. “It is a fairly simple domestic fraud case involving various companies, one of the many fraud cases in our country that fail because the defense drags out the investigation until the case has expired.”

No reaction

So a matter of the right lawyers? The fact is that at a certain point the company “realized that the investigation had to be redone”. Dirk Cordeel told this five years ago The time.

The limitation period for the crimes in this case is five years, extendable in the event of new investigative acts to a maximum of 10 years. During the final proceedings in 2019, the public prosecutor’s office had to determine that certain charges had already expired.

“If the statute of limitations is delayed, it is usually a mistake on the part of the public prosecutor’s office,” says Joris De Wortelaer, employment law lawyer and affiliated with the VUB. “This can interrupt the limitation period by taking certain actions, and you must serve a summons on time. A good lawyer can delay actions, but it is the labor hearing officer, investigating judge or the prosecutor who is in the driver’s seat.”

In this case, the investigation would have been halted for no less than eight years. The federal public prosecutor’s office has been extensively contacted by: The morningbut does not provide an explanation for the limitation period of this file.

According to new provisions of the criminal code that come into effect on Monday, cases can in principle no longer expire once they are before a sentencing judge. That would have made no difference to this case, because the limitation period already occurred in the investigation phase, before there was a sentencing judge.

Neither the office of Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt (Open Vld) nor that of Minister Peter Van Peteghem (CD&V), charged with coordinating the fight against fraud, wanted to respond. Filip Cordeel’s lawyer and that of the company also declined to comment.