2023-10-11 04:32:00
At the head of the federal prosecutor’s office for 10 years (for two five-year terms), Frédéric Van Leeuw can no longer stay in office and must give up his place. There is only one candidate to succeed him, or more precisely one candidate: magistrate Ann Fransen, current number two in the federal prosecutor’s office and also head of the terrorism section.
Frédéric Van Leeuw – whose name and face particularly marked the general public during the period of the attacks of March 15, 2016 in Brussels – hesitated for a long time regarding the follow-up he would give to his career. He finally applied for the position of attorney general of Brussels. Although he is far from being a novice in the legal world, he will face an equally renowned profile, that of Paul Dhaeyer.
The latter was in charge of the “Ecofin” section at the Brussels public prosecutor’s office from 2004 to 2010, then was an investigating judge in Charleroi between 2010 and 2018, before becoming president of the Francophone Business Court in Brussels.
Johan Delmulle’s successor as prosecutor general of Brussels will therefore, in all cases, be a leader of Belgian justice. Who will win? The answer should come on October 11, in the evening. But entry into office is not planned before mid-2024. And the future attorney general will have his work cut out for him since Brussels is (according to the number of cases prosecuted and/or processed there) one of the most important jurisdictions in the country.
Who does what ?
Public prosecutors, federal prosecutors, public prosecutors: these people are fundamental to the proper functioning of the country’s public prosecutor’s offices. They respectively head the general prosecutor’s offices, the federal prosecutor’s office and the king’s prosecutor’s offices.
The primary role of a public prosecutor’s office, or public prosecutor, in the courts is to represent and defend the interests of society. It therefore represents neither a suspect nor a victim.
For the courts of first instance (civil court, criminal court, family court, sentence enforcement court), the police court and the Company court, the tasks of the public prosecutor’s office are carried out by the 14 public prosecutor’s offices of the public prosecutor of the country. For the labor court, these tasks are fulfilled by the labor auditors.
The federal prosecutor’s office – headed by a federal prosecutor – intervenes for more complex crimes that go beyond the boundaries of the districts: trafficking and smuggling of human beings, terrorism, organized crime, money laundering. Thus, the jurisdiction of the federal prosecutor’s office extends to the entire Belgian territory and is therefore not attached to a trial court.
At the level of the court of appeal and the labor court, the public prosecutor’s office is represented by the (five) general prosecutors’ offices (and the general auditors). The country’s five attorneys general form, with the federal prosecutor, the College of Attorneys General, a body whose mission is to implement criminal policy.
The case of the King’s prosecutor
Finally, each attorney general is also the boss of the King’s prosecutors active in his territory of jurisdiction. Johan Delmulle’s successor will have work to do with “his” king’s prosecutor’s office, since Brussels does not have an officially appointed king’s prosecutor since the departure of Jean-Marc Meilleur in April 2021.
It was the deputy, Tim De Wolf, who took over the reins of the prosecution, as acting King’s Prosecutor. An ad interim position that he still occupies, while the Brussels public prosecutor’s office, the largest in the country, is suffering. But there too, there is movement since Tim De Wolf has applied for a position as magistrate with the federal prosecutor’s office.
If his candidacy is accepted, Tim De Wolf should leave his current position by April 2024. Who might take his place? No indication on this yet. What is certain is that 2024 will be eventful…
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