In English

The story of the Belgian Central Bank during the past 25 years has been one of brainwashing, desinformation, expropriation through unauthorised transfers of billions of euros and clear deception. The government and the directors of the Belgian Central Bank wanted the public to believe that the Belgian Central Bank was the property of the Treasury and that the minority shareholders were not holding equity but consumer price index related bonds. And……. They almost succeeded.

Myself, as a professional financial advisor, I published an article in 1992, it was titled “Quo Vadis National Bank”. In this article I told the readers that the National Bank equity was a good investment but that the gold and currency reserves belonged to the government and that investors should look at this investment as a CPI related bond. In the years that followed I repeated my buy recommondation many times but each time with the warning that the gold and currency reserves belonged to the Treasury.

So I repeated to my clients what the government told me, it sounded reasonable to me and I had no reason to question what all those important people told the citizens of this country. I trusted my government. Should a government not be trusted by the people who elected them?

Until the National Bank started transfering billions to the Treasury. This was very strange. In countries like France and Germany, where the Central Banks were fully owned by the government, the banks refused to transfer capital to the government, allways stating that they were fully independant and that it was not in the interest of the citizens that reserves were transfered to greedy politicians. In Belgium, where 50% of the shares of the Central Bank were listed on the stock exchange, the Bank transfered billions to the Treasury?!? At this point I started digging into this matter and it took quite some time before I believed what I found out. The stories I was told, made no sense and the government and the Bank were violating all the rules I could imagin.

In France king Louis XIV said “l’Etat, c’est moi”, he placed himself above the law and this attitude lead to the French Revolution.

In Belgium the government said “The National Bank is ours”, the government placed its own short term interest above the fundamental rights of the shareholders, it resulted in the uprising of the small shareholders.

Erik Geenen - August 26, 2005.