In the judicial investigation into possible fraud by Sihame El Kaouakibi, several house searches were carried out on Thursday, the public prosecutor confirms. Investigators started looking for accounting documents.
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The house searches took place on Thursday morning at various addresses linked to Flemish Member of Parliament Sihame El Kaouakibi (ex-Open VLD). Investigators from the Central Anti-Corruption Service (CDBC) and the Computer Crime Unit of the federal police searched various buildings in search of accounting documents, the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office confirms. Nobody was arrested.
Since El Kaouakibi is a Member of Parliament, the chairman of the court of appeal had to authorize the searches. The chairman of the Flemish Parliament (Liesbeth Homans, N-VA, red.) was present during the house searches, ‘says the public prosecutor.
In recent months, a large part of the accounts of Let’s Go Urban and the companies of El Kaouakibi had already been taken up. With today’s action, the investigating judge in Antwerp wanted to be able to form as complete a picture of the accounting system as possible. In the meantime, an independent auditor has also been appointed by the investigating judge to investigate those accounts.
Investigations merged
The house searches on Thursday morning are part of the judicial investigation that has been ongoing since March before an investigating judge in Antwerp and that arises from an investigation that the public prosecutor’s office had opened officially (on its own initiative) a month earlier.
The civil party complaint that Sihame El Kaouakibi himself filed against strangers for forgery and computer fraud is being investigated in the same investigation. The public prosecutor’s office brought the two investigations together in one judicial investigation on March 15, 2021. The facts were qualified as forgery, fraudulent failure to keep correct accounts, subsidy fraud, misuse of corporate assets, misuse of trust, forgery in computer science and external and internal hacking, ‘said public prosecutor Kristof Aerts.
A complaint with a civil party claim that El Kaouakibi filed in mid-March against the man behind the website ‘t Scheldt is also being investigated by the investigating judge and is attached to the major investigation. The man was asked this week by the CDBC to reveal who the authors of the articles on El Kaouakibi are. On the website, ‘t Scheldt says:’ We will never reveal the names of the authors of the articles on Sihame El Kaouakibi. ‘
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