Due to the typical ribbon development in Flanders and the often remote, detached houses in the hills of Wallonia, delivering newspapers and magazines in Belgium is no sinecure. Every year millions are involved in getting the morning papers from, say, Sint-Job-in-‘t-Goor to Torgny near the French border in the mailbox before half past seven. And what about the magazines, from trade union magazines to the Catholic weekly Church and Life – circulation of almost 300,000 copies.
However, the Belgian government considers it so important that its population remains well informed that it largely pays for this delivery itself, at a raison of 170 million euros per year. After a tender procedure since 2015, that subsidy always ends up with the Belgian postal company Bpost, 51 percent of which is a state-owned company. Now everything seems to have gone wrong during the tender procedure for the so-called ‘newspaper contract’. After an internal audit at Bpost, CEO Dirk Tirez was fired last Friday. He was already the second director within a year and a half to be discredited at Bpost and had to resign. The share of Bpost fell almost 10 percent last Monday.
Deleted messages
The internal investigation would have revealed that illegal price agreements had been made between another distributor, the major newspaper publishers in Belgium and the top of Bpost, with the aim of keeping the subsidy amount as high as possible in the run-up to the new tendering round, and possible keep out competition. Belgian publishers have been profiting from the newspaper contract for years; indirectly they are left with tens of millions of euros from the state aid.
It is one of the reasons why the two largest, DPG Media and Mediahuis (the publisher of NRC) have been able to take over almost all Dutch newspapers. At the end of 2016, this situation led to talks between Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) and his Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo (Open-VLD), but never to any measures.
Already in August, Bpost, a listed company for the other 49 percent, started an audit into possible malpractices within its own ranks. Both CEO Audrey Hanard and former CEO Tirez claim to have started the investigation after “signals” that something was wrong within the company.
The first results of the audit, at the end of October, showed that the award of the newspaper contract for the period 2023 to 2027 would have involved ‘unauthorised practices’. According to Hanard, the investigation was broadened with “new, forensic methods that made it possible to also look at mailboxes internally,” she said during a press conference. Deleted messages can also be retrieved. Dirk Tirez was then initially only suspended “in good consultation”.
The investigation has since been extended to the Belgian judiciary and the competition watchdog BMA. At the end of October, the latter raided DPG Media in Belgium, among others. On the basis of new information, Tirez was fired ‘without compensation’ on Friday, December 9, reportedly not because he himself is involved in possible violations of the law, but because deleted emails allegedly showed that he knew about the illegal price fixing, but did not act sharply . “The burden of proof against him is decisive enough for the Board of Directors to come to this decision,” said Bpost spokesman Veerle Van Mierlo.
In a response to LinkedIn, Tirez writes that he has never lost his integrity throughout his career and therefore asked for the internal investigation. “That is why I have always refused to sign a new newspaper contract with the Belgian state.” Despite his resignation, Tirez has agreed to cooperate fully with ongoing investigations.
Thousands of jobs
In addition to CEO Dirk Tirez, director of national operations Nicolas Meire and Tom Vermeirsch, commercial director of subsidiary AMP, were also fired. Meire would say reporting The standard have taken the initiative to reach an agreement with the publishers and another distributor, so that Bpost could win the new newspaper contract for the period up to 2027 without any problems. Vermeirsch’s role is still unclear.
The newspaper contract has divided Belgian politics for years. The liberal and socialist parties in particular are diametrically opposed to each other in the dossier. It was Michael Freilich, Member of Parliament on behalf of the Flemish nationalist N-VA, who was tipped off about the case by an “anonymous whistleblower” at Bpost in October. He’s been stuck in the business ever since. He would like to see the newspaper contract disappear completely. The liberal Open-VLD and the French-speaking MR also want to get rid of it.
The social-democratic PS, which nominated Bpost chairman Hanard and supplied the minister in charge of the newspaper contract with Pierre-Yves Dermagne, fears thousands of jobs without the subsidy of millions, especially in Wallonia. They await the results of the investigation at Dermagne’s cabinet before they respond substantively. According to Petra De Sutter (Groen), Minister of Public Enterprises responsible for Bpost, those results would not be available until January.
Budget negotiations earlier this year resulted in a compromise on the newspaper contract: from 2024, Bpost will receive a 50 million euro less subsidy for the delivery of newspapers and magazines. The question is whether the subsidy is still politically sustainable in the near future, if it later becomes possible that it has been cheated for years.
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