Belgium? How can Belgium beat the U.S. at anything?

[DFW]

14. There's a nasty dark side to Belgium the tourist posters don't show you

I'm there a lot for work, and speak both French and Flemish.

It is one of the most corrupt countries in western Europe, with an old boy crony system in place and corrupt cops like you only see in films about small southern towns. There is one brigade that goes around accusing every business they can find of "money laundering," uses that as an excuse to confiscate everything the business has, and then takes their time stealing/exchanging what they can out of the confiscated goods, since there is no time limit on that in Belgium. They once took 15 kilo bars of gold from some small precious metals dealer, waited years and then returned his "12" kilo bars when he was found innocent (DUH) of money laundering. The guy got nowhere with his protests of being shortchanged because the cops have a rubber-stamp "examining judge" who, contrary to Belgian law, doesn't look at the dossier presented to him, but rather just stamps and signs whatever the corrupt cops put in front of him. Every lawyer in Belgium knows of this guy. This particular scheme only saw the light of day when the girlfriend of one of the corrupt cops broke up with him and told some other cops where in his apartment they could find the stolen three kilos of gold. There are many other cases similar to this one, but this one is one of the rare ones that made the papers (there is de facto press censorship of "sensitive, i.e. embarrassing" matters), so I'm not revealing anything I am not supposed to know.

The child molester/murderer Marc Dutroux was identified ten years before he was actually put away, saying "you can't touch me, I have friends in high places." They couldn't, because indeed he did. This was a huge scandal, but Dutroux continued defiling and murdering young girls because the word came from on high to leave him alone.

Belgium is not all chocolate and waffles, no matter what the pretty posters say, or how nice it is to take a boat tour through the canals of Brugge.

On the positive side, their chocolate and their waffles ARE pretty amazing, and there is always Adolphe Sax who invented a musical instrument that is derived from his name and is pretty widely used still today (bet you can't guess which one, right?).