Egbert Laschert risks lawsuit despite parliamentary immunity | the interior

The Public Prosecution Authority met in the House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon. There, behind closed doors, a letter sent by the Ghent Public Prosecutor regarding a direct summons from Open Vld President Lascart was discussed before the criminal court. The summons was not issued by the prosecution itself, but by Geert van Mol, the man behind the satirical website ‘t Scheldt, with whom Lasshart had already argued several times.

The roots of the subpoena lie in an old case. For more than ten years, Laschert worked as a lawyer for the Wall Street Journal, with whom Van Möl got into a business dispute. In a later recall from Lachert to Scheldt, he noted that this was the reason why he was targeted so often. According to Van Mol, Lachert is violating his professional secrets as a lawyer.

Normally a Member of Parliament has parliamentary immunity, but Van Mole’s lawyers have exploited a strange loophole where not all MPs have immunity for a single day this year. According to the Ghent public prosecutor, the summons is admissible, which means that Laschert must legally sit on the dock to defend himself.

The question is how to proceed and whether the prosecution is still suspending the proceedings. In any case, the commission will hear from the attorney general about the situation, just like Lachert himself. The head of Open Vld calls his summon a “hallucination” and talks about harm done by t Scheldt.