The owner of a brothel in Ghent’s red-light district was sentenced on Wednesday to eight months in prison for improperly collecting €240,000 in ‘Corona’ unemployment benefits meant for 24 prostitutes in 2020, according to the labour inspection office.
An investigation by the office showed that only a quarter of the amount was paid out to the women.
The operator of the establishment allegedly declared 24 girls “out of work” at the start of the lockdown before claiming temporary unemployment benefits known as ‘Corona’ on their behalf.
The lawyer for the National Employment Office (NEO) argued in the Ghent Criminal Court that the man had wrongly claimed the benefits in question. “During the Coronavirus period, temporary unemployment due to force majeure could be claimed electronically in a simplified manner,” he explained.
“The defendant did so, but there was no valid employment contract for the dates in question and we are asking for the money back,” he said.
Some prostitutes said they were not even aware of the process and never saw the money.
“I was abroad and the authorities notified me that I had to pay back what was granted to me. But I never received anything other than the clients’ payments,” one of the women testified. “The brothel operator told me I was not entitled to the ‘Corona’ allowance.”
In its ruling, the court called the man’s actions a slap in the face of the many other businesses that had to reinvent themselves at the time of the pandemic and those that had to lay off staff due to the crisis.
In the past, the defendant had already been convicted 29 times by the police court, including for hit-and-run offences, and four times by the criminal court.
