On 9 August 2023, an article appeared in De Tijd announcing that the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched a pilot project in which it will offer suspects of offences a proposal to immediately admit guilt at the end of the investigation (the so-called ‘guilty plea’ or ‘plea bargaining’). For the time being, the scope is limited to financial, economic or environmental offences.
Anyone who has ever watched an American series like Suits probably knows that in the US it is customary for the public prosecutor’s office to negotiate the sentence with the defendant in exchange for an acknowledgement of guilt. What many do not know, however, is that a similar concept has also existed in Belgium since 2016. In Belgium, this simplified settlement of a criminal case has not – as yet – enjoyed much success. The public prosecutor’s office now wants to change that.
The prior acknowledgement of guilt in Belgian criminal law
The prior acknowledgement of guilt (‘guilty plea’) means that the public prosecutor’s office concludes an agreement regarding the sentence with a suspect who confesses to the facts. In principle, the agreed sentence will be lower than the sentence the public prosecutor’s office “intended to request” from the criminal court. The advantage of such an agreement is that the defendant avoids a lengthy criminal trial and is therefore not left in the dark (for long) about the sentence to be served. Depending on the specific situation, settling – whether in the form of a criminal settlement or a guilty plea – can be an interesting consideration.
A specific disadvantage of the guilty plea, on the other hand, is that the negotiated sentence ends up as a conviction on the suspect’s criminal record. This probably explains the limited success of the guilty plea so far compared to, for example, the criminal settlement. After all, with a criminal settlement, the suspect will keep a clean criminal record.
The legislator provides for the mandatory assistance of a lawyer in such a procedure. The lawyer must inform the suspect about their rights, about the course of the procedure and – importantly – about the consequences of accepting the proposal and acknowledging guilt.
The Fraud and Corporate Criminal Law team at Everest Law has extensive experience in assisting clients during negotiations with the public prosecutor’s office for both criminal settlements, but also already in the form of the guilty plea. Feel free to contact us for a no-obligation initial consultation.