Scientology sent for trial in Belgium

A Belgian court has sent Scientologists and two of the movement's organisations for trial on fraud and other charges: but it is still a long road to the courtroom.

A court in Belgium on Thursday sent two Scientology organisations and 11 Scientologists for trial on fraud and other charges, the Belga news agency reported.

Two Belgian non-profits targetted

The Chambre de Conseil had for several months been considering whether two criminal investigations against the movement, one dating back as far as 1997, should go to court.

The cases, now merged into one, involve accusations of fraud, illegal practice of medicine and the non-respect of privacy laws.

One allegation police investigated was over the placing of false job adverts that gave the impression that paid work was available when in fact it was for unpaid work.

Perhaps the most important feature of Thursday's ruling is that it names two Scientology non-profit organisations in Belgium and not just members of the movement.

Prosecutors are going after the Church of Scientology in Belgium and the Brussels-based European Office for Public Affairs and Human Rights.

Since federal prosecutors are characterising Scientology as a criminal organisation, that might mean it could be banned in Belgium if convicted – at least according to Belgian press reports.

The court ordered that the case regarding a 11th Scientologist should be transferred to a separate court because he is an English-speaker.

And it ruled that the statute of limitations for the offences alleged in the case of at least one other Scientologist had expired.

The individuals and the two organisations sent for trial have the right to appeal the Belgian court's decision within 15 days, which they are doing.

A ‘modern inquisition’

Scientology has already issued a statement attacking the ruling and vowing to defend itself.

All those sent for trial have 15 days in which to lodge an appeal and Scientology has already made it clear that it will fight all the way.

“We cannot help but hope that this interminable investigation is nothing less than a modern inquisition and an affront to freedom of religion and the rights of the defence,” said a Scientology statement.

The time the investigation had taken — the earliest of the two dates back to 1997 — showed that the facts were “non-existent” and that the case was “made up of rumours, attributing motives and lies to what the Scientology religion really is,” the statement added.

Scientology should not be treated any differently from other religions, it insisted, concluding that the movement would fight to the very end any “any biased criminal proceedings that violates their basic rights”.

Belgian broadcaster RTBF spoke to lawyers on either side of the case.

Maître Bruno Dayez, who represents some of the plaintiffs, welcomed the fact that the criminal case was being sent for trial.

“It’s already really one point clearly in our favour,” he told Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

As for the rest, even if there are procedural obstacles, we are still entitled to act at the civil level — so even if the case were to collapse on the criminal side that would not mean for all that that I would not pursue compensation for my clients to the end.”

After 17 years of investigation however, Scientology’s lawyers will argue that the case has dragged on too long for it to come to trial.

“It does pose a problem, to have such long proceedings,” Maître Pierre Monville, who represents one of the defendants, told RTBF.

“The infractions stretch back into time and are hidden and so it is difficult to see what someone is being accused of when you go through 20 years in the life of an association,” he added.

The charge sheet, RTBF reported, includes accusations of the illegal practice of medicine; fraud; extortion; false representation; the non-respect of privacy; and criminal organisation.

According to one media report, the ruling was sufficiently well formulated to provoke the admiration of one of the defence lawyers. “Magnifique,” he said after it had been read out in court Thursday morning.

But there is still a way to go before the case gets to trial — if indeed it ever does.

Once the appeals are lodged, it could take months for the higher court to deliver its ruling, Belgian media reported. And if that goes against Scientology, it might even be possible for the defendants to find grounds for a further appeal on a point of law.

This would not be the first time the movement has tried to kill off the case against it.

Scientology has already tried to get the earlier of the two cases involved here thrown out.

Their lawyers argued that prosecutors’ comments to the news media in the years following the launch of the 1997 investigation had prejudiced their right to a fair trial.

After arguing their case in vain in the Belgian courts, they filed a case with the European Court of Human Rights, but the Strasbourg-based court also rejected their complaint, as reported here at the time.

Thursday's ruling in Belgium follows the definitive conviction last year in France of two Scientology organisations – and several Scientologists – for fraud.

And as we have reported here before, there is every sign that Belgian investigators have learned from the approach taken in France.

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This report is a revised version of the material filed earlier to Tony Ortega’s site, The Underground Bunker.

ECHR rebuffs Scientology Belgium

Europe's top court has thrown out a Scientology complaint against Belgium over prosecutors' comments to the media about an ongoing investigation.

The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a complaint from Scientology against Belgian officials for their comments to the press on an ongoing investigation into the movement.

ECHR rejects Scientology bid

Briefly, Scientology was arguing its right to a fair trial had been breached by comments made by prosecutors. The ECHR pointed out that since the trial had not yet taken place, that was a little premature.

The Strasbourg-based court ruled the application inadmissible and that decision is final.

Here is how the ECHR news release summarised the matter.1

Scientology's complaint was over news reports of an investigation that Belgium opened back in 1997 into alleged fraud and embezzlement at the Brussels-registered ASBL Eglise de Scientologie.

Scientology filed a series of five criminal complaints in Belgium against “person or persons unknown”, saying its right to be considered innocent until found guilty had been violated.

This was based on reports in the Belgian press between 1999 and 2007 in which state prosecutors were quoted allegedly making certain accusations against the movement.

The Belgian authorities shelved each one of the complaints.

In 2007, the Belgian prosecutor's office filed charges against 12 individuals and – rather more importantly for the movement – two Scientology organisations.

Scientology went to the court of appeal the same year to argue that the proceedings against it should be thrown out.

Prosecutors' statements to the press had breached the secrecy of the judicial investigation, they said. That violated the principle of the presumption of innocence and thus their chances of a fair trial.

In 2007, Belgium's Court of Appeal, while agreeing to consider their complaint, rejected it: an appeal on points of law was dismissed the following year.

A hearing to set a pretrial timetable for this case was adjourned in 2010 but the Belgian case is still active, said the ECHR statement.

Sound familiar?

This is not the first time Scientology has gone after an adversary on procedural grounds.

Scientology follows French media coverage of its affairs closely and some news organisations have been caught out.

Eric Roux, the movement's main spokesman in France, reported how Scientology recently won a judgment against France Televisions.2

A piece on its website advertising a documentary on Scientology made the mistake of reporting on the 2009 fraud convictions as if they were definitive.

But “as any fule kno” – at least if they read Tony Ortega's The Underground Bunker – the case is still active.

As we reported for Tony earlier this month, France's higher court, the Cour de Cassation, heard oral arguments on this case on September 8 and will hand down its ruling on October 16.3

Caught out

The offending piece was a brief item posted on its website promoting a documentary on the movement “La Scientologie, la vérité sur un mensonge” (“Scientology, the truth about a lie”).

This item, reproduced in the appeal court judgment, read:

Founded in 1950 in the United States by Ron H. and rebaptised “Church” in 1954, Scientology – whether it is considered as a “technology of the mind”, a church or a cult – has managed to make its mark on the world in the last 50 years. So what is this “empire”, whose former followers say has certain totalitarian trends and which nevertheless continues to seduce. What are its aims, its practices and its ideology. To unlock the mechanics of Scientology, former and present disciples speak out and show how you can be trapped, body and soul, sometimes with the whole family, children included, in a totally alienating system. This investigative documentary throws a light on the real issues Scientology poses to our world and our time, as the “Church” has just for the first time been convicted in France of organised fraud (Emphasis added)4

While none of this was exactly flattering, it was that last phrase that crossed the line legally.

In France, a conviction cannot be described as definitive until the defendants have exhausted every legal remedy.

France Télévisions knew fine well that Scientology had taken the case to the Cour de Cassation: after all, they had reported on the story at the time.

There is always the possibility that the Cour de Cassation will next month strike down the original convictions against Scientology and so wipe the slate clean – so the broadcaster should have taken the trouble to explain that the case was still active.5

The organisation that actually brought this action was L’Association Spirituelle de l’Eglise de Scientologie CC (ASES): Scientology's Celebrity Centre in Paris and one of the two Scientology bodies convicted in the Paris trial.

The Celebrity Centre's initial complaint was rejected by the civil court in Caen, so it appealed.

But while the appeal court found in its favour, it rejected Scientology's suggestion that the lower court had “unduly favoured” the defendants. And when it came to damages, the court hardly threw the book at the broadcaster.

France Télévisions should not have given the impression that the conviction against Scientology was definitive, it ruled: but the offending piece was a brief item on its website and there was no evidence that it was up for more than a few days.

The court ordered the broadcaster to pay 3,000 euros in damages (about $4,044) and another 3,000 to cover legal costs.

The irony here is that the EHCR seems to have rejected Scientology's claim against Belgium on the same grounds that France Télévisions got caught out: the case is still active.

Here's how the Strasbourg court's English-language press release summarised the ruling, (which itself was handed down in French):

The Court reiterated that it had to ascertain whether proceedings were fair in their entirety.

As there had not yet been any final judgment by the Belgian courts on the relevant “charge”, the part of the application concerning an alleged violation of the right to a fair hearing was premature and therefore had to be dismissed.

The ECHR also found that the evidence submitted of the prosecutors' allegedly prejudicial remarks was inadequate.

There had been no audio or video recording of those statements, nor had they been transcribed in documents emanating from the authorities in question, such as procedural documents or official press releases.

The only evidence produced by the applicant association consisted of press articles for which the relevant journalists were solely responsible, and it was highly possible that those articles did not accurately reflect the nuances of the remarks in question...

Consequently, the Court found that this part of the application was manifestly ill-founded and had to

be rejected.

This rather sounds like the Strasbourg court is telling them to stop messing about – and of course Scientology ought to have known better.

For they know that the ECHR is the court of last resort for most European countries.

They know that a plaintiff must exhaust all legal channels in the country concerned before submitting an application to the Strasbourg court.

And if France's Cour de Cassation throws out Scientology's appeals in the fraud case and the convictions stand, that is where they will take their case next.

But then, as Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard himself wrote:

The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversation, public debate, or a court of law...

The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.6

They did not quite manage that in either case – but you get the general idea.

This is not, of course, the only case that Belgian prosecutors are developing against Scientology.

As we reported last December – first at The Underground Bunker and then at greater length here – they are also going after them in a separate case on charges of fraud, the illegal practice of medicine, breach of privacy and extortion.

We are still waiting for a court date on that one too.

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1 You can download the release here.

2 Eric Roux's report is at his website. Here's an English-language account of this judgment, posted at the site of the European Coordination of Associations and Individuals for Freedom of Conscience, (CAPLC). It describes itself as an NGO that “follows a humanist universal call towards peace, brotherhood and tolerance regarding all human beings”. A brief browse of its contents however suggests it is another lobbying group for Scientology.

3 I'll try to post a more detailed write-up of the arguments presented at the Cour de Cassation before the end of the month.

4 This is my own translation: you can read an alternative translation at the English-language summary referred to in note #1. The full appeal court judgment in French has been posted here.

5 It is worth just noting in passing that the judgment is no reflection on the documentary itself.

6 “A Manual on the Dissemination of Material”, L. Ron Hubbard, March 1955, Ability magazine.

Belgian Prosecutors make their move

Federal prosecutors in Belgium have charged Scientology's operation there and two leading executives with fraud, extortion and other offences. And it looks like they have learned from the Paris convictions.

It took a few years, but the wheels appear to be moving in Belgium.

Federal prosecutors have charged the Church of Scientology there with a range of offences, more than four years after police raided their Brussels offices. Two senior executives with the movement have also been charged.

This is the list of charges, according to Belgian media reports:  

• illegal practice of medicine
• fraud
• extorsion
• forgery and use of false documents
• violation of privacy
• criminal organisation

The investigation sprang out of a complaint lodged in 2008 by Actiris, the Brussels regional employment office. A number of job seekers had complained that Scientology was using fake job offers to try to recruit people into the movement.

Belgian broadcaster RTBF on Friday ran an interview with Chaida Moussaoui, who had answered one such ad. It read: Non-profit seeks administrative assistant – training provided, no experience necessary.

The Scientology job ad (RTBF December 28 report)

While, it looked like a paid job, she quickly realized that something was wrong. “They were speaking more in terms of becoming a member, of adopting their way of seeing things...,” she said.

“I can't tell you it by heart, I read it in 30 seconds, but it was more of a contract,...” she added. A contract for two and a half years to five years – to work as an unpaid volunteer.

The complaint also referred to a poster on the window of the Scientology: “We're hiring!” it read. But once again, this turned out to be for unpaid volunteer work.¹

On April 11, 2008, police raided Scientology's Brussels offices in Uccle, a leafy, up-market suburb of the Belgian capital.

Over the next day or two they sealed off access to the offices and carted off piles of documents.

It was investigating magistrate Michel Claise who had ordered the raids, and within a day or two he had charged the Scientology organisation with fraud.²

Now, more than four years on, according to Friday's reports in two Belgian papers, the Flemish-language De Tijd (Time) and the French-language daily L'Echo, federal prosecutors have taken up the baton.³

Their list of charges appears to build on Claise's initial approach. Presumably the extra charges spring from some of the documents seized during the 2008 raid.

The French connection

Claise and the prosecutors appear to be on the same page – which means they are off to a better start than the French case that came to court in 2009.

That case eventually ended in convictions not just for individual Scientologists but for two Scientology organisations in France. It started rather less auspiciously however.

As the movement's defence lawyers pointed out on more than one occasion, initially, the prosecutors office did not even want to press charges in the case.⁴

It was left to investigating magistrate Jean-Christophe Hullin to press ahead regardless and bring the case to trial. And at that point the two prosecutors assigned to the case, Maud Morel-Coujard and Nicolas Baïetto, pursued it with a vengeance.⁵

That trial led to the conviction of several Scientologists on a number of charges – but more importantly of two of its French organisations for organised fraud.

The sentences, together with heavy fines, were confirmed on appeal in February of this year.⁶

The French prosecutors had asked for the two Scientology organisations to be dissolved under what they thought were the penalties provided under a law punishing organisations convicted of fraud.

But that option, it turned out, had been accidentally removed from the statute books less than two weeks before the first trial started.

The news of that change, when it broke in September 2009, created quite a storm at the time as well as some fairly feverish speculation. Nobody however was ever able to prove that this was anything more than an unfortunate error – a cock-up rather than a conspiracy.⁷

But a conviction is a conviction, whatever the bumps in the road: and the Paris judgment broke new ground in France.

After the appeal court convictions in February, Maître Olivier Morice, for the French counter-cult group UNADFI, spelled out its significance to reporters gathered outside the courtroom.

“It is the first time in France that Scientology has been convicted as an organisation for organised fraud,” he said.

“I think that we are at the beginning of other key decisions against Scientology, which could lead to its banning, or its dissolution,” he added.

And he made it clear he was aware of other investigations in the pipeline in other countries –

including Belgium.

The original Belgian case

Comparing the two cases, one cannot help thinking that Belgium is following in the footsteps of the French investigation.

As I reported in February, after the French appeal court ruling, security specialist Arnaud Palisson

took time on his blog, Rapports Minoritaires, to express some satisfaction.

Palisson, a former intelligence specialist with the French police, argued that the convictions vindicated his own work on how to tackle Scientology's criminal excesses.⁸

Palisson's doctoral thesis had set out what he thought was the best way to build a criminal case against Scientology, systematically explaining how their core practices violated various laws.

Their belief system did not interest him: he was even happy to concede the point that Scientology was a religion – not something every critic of the movement would be comfortable with.

He focussed instead on their practices: not the creed then, but the deed.

In Paris, the court took much the same line. The lawyers, the prosecutors and the judges were all at pains to stress that they were not there to challenge Scientology's beliefs, its religious freedoms – despite the defendants' claimed the contrary.

They were there to determine if its actions infringed the law.

The indictment, trials and convictions in the Paris case followed the lines set out in Palisson's work.

And in his February posting Palisson mentions in passing that he passed on his thesis to a magistrate investigating Scientology in Belgium.⁹

What is not clear however, is whether he is talking about Claise or whoever handled an even earlier investigation, dating back more than a decade earlier.

For there is another Belgian case concerning Scientology, this one launched in 1997.

It was not until 2007 that the prosecutor's office moved to charge 12 individuals – and two organisations – on charges including organized crime, extortion, fraud, and the illegal practice of medicine.¹⁰

Not unlike the more recent indictment, in other words.

This earlier case however, got bogged down in the legal limbo of the Chambre de Conseil, a federal legal office that can intervene in investigations to determine whether or not there is enough evidence to bring charges.

Given that the events in this case date back more than 15 years, the chances of getting convictions must inevitably, be slimmer.

There has been speculation however that the two cases might in the end be merged into one.

The prosecutors office has made no comment on that question – and has said nothing in response to Friday's media reports on the indictments in Claise's investigation.

One thing looks certain though: 2013 just got a whole lot more interesting.

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Update: Arnaud Palisson replied to my inquiry as to whom he sent his thesis in Belgium. Here is what he had to say.

“When I made my presentation to the National School of Magistrates in Paris in October 2002, an investigator from the Belgian gendarmerie came to find me in the hall to tell me he was working for an investigating magistrate who was instructing a Scientology, and that he would be very interested in obtaining a copy of my thesis. I sent it on to him by email a little after.

“I saw this gendarme a few months later and he assured me that my thesis had become the document of reference in his affair – which explains that he had directed his investigation to fraud (by individual and corporate) and the illegal exercise of medicine; Belgian criminal law is actually every close to French criminal law.”

Palisson confesses he cannot remember the name of the gendarme or the investigating magistrate concerned. But the chronology helps us put the pieces into place.

He was approached in 2002, well before the Claise investigation got started. At that time, the earlier case had been active for five years.

It would seem then, unless there is another case I am not aware of, that the first investigation was informed by Palisson's work.

In any case, Claise is surely aware of his work too: colleagues do tend to consult each other, after all.

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1 See here for the RTBF interview. ASBL in French is short for Association sans but lucratif – non-profit association. See also this clip from an English-subtitled Flemish report posted by “mnql1” at Ex-Scientologist Message Board which also features Moussaoui. It shows you the “We're hiring” (On embauche) poster on the window of the Scientology office. As you'll see in this second report, the Scientologist interviewed in this piece actually confirms that they were hiring unpaid volunteers.

2 These details from an April 2008 report, again, from Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

3 This is the De Tidj article here; the piece in L'Echo is behind a firewall, but thanks to “mnql1” you can find it, complete with an English translation, at Why We Protest.

4 See this entry in the blog of Danièle Gounord, for years the public face of Scientology in France.

5 For a detailed account of their scathing summing up in this case see my two-part coverage of this part of the trial: “...for the Prosecution I” and “...for the Prosecution II”.

6 For a summary of the appeal court verdicts and sentences, see “The Appeal Court Judgement”. Scientology has taken the case to a final appeal at the Cour de Cassation.

7 For my coverage of the row at the time see “The Great Escape?” The law in question was subsequently reinstated and is available for use in future cases.

8 You can read Palisson's February 7, 2012 posting here; and in English here, thanks once again to mnql1 at Why We Protest.

9From mnql1's translation at Why We Protest: I forwarded copies of my thesis to two judges. One was Belgian and he was investigating an important Scientology case; the other was French and she was investigating the huge Church of Scientology-Paris Celebrity Centre case (the same case that ended last week at the court of appeal).

From that point on, my thesis never left the desk of the two judges. It also landed on the desk of a Swiss judge a few months later.

I set out my account of what happened to Palisson after his thesis became known in a post earlier this year: “Scientology Cries Foul”.

10 See for example this May 2009 report from Belgium's Le Soir tracking the procedural wrangling in that earlier case; and this February 2012 update published at the time the appeal court confirmed the Paris convictions, published in Belgium's Le Vif magazine (and handily translated from the French at Why We Protest by the ubiquitous mnql1).