The former CEO of bpost, Dirk Tirez, has been aware of secret agreements between the post office and some of its competitors surrounding the contract for distribution of daily newspapers since the start of last year. VRT News has seen emails sent and received by Mr Tirez that show that he was aware of the secret agreement since January 2022.
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Bpost CEO already knew about newspaper contract skullduggery in January 2022
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Controversy broke in October 2022 when it was revealed that bpost had entered into a secret agreement with its competitors that allowed it to land a lucrative government contract for the distribution of daily newspaper. The agreement effectively served to push up the price paid to ensure that those of us with a newspaper subscription receive our daily paper each morning in our letterbox.
It was an internal audit at bpost that brought the malpractice to light. Bpost’s then CEO Dirk Tirez had to resign, as did Nicolas Meire and Tom Vermeirsch that had both worked on the newspaper contract.
However, the exact role the CEO had played in the skullduggery remained unclear. Had he stepped down because as CEO the buck stopped with him or was he himself involved in the secret deal? E-mail traffic that VRT NWS was able to view now shows that the CEO had been aware of possible illegal agreements regarding the newspaper contract since, at the latest, January 2022.
An email dated 26 January 2022 that was sent by Mr Meire to Mr Tirez mentions the deal with the publishers. It is explained that in future one of bpost’s competitor PPP will distribute extra newspapers in Ghent (East Flanders) and that the publishers will use a false pretext (the quality of bpost's distribution is said to be substandard) to justify this.
However, this was not the real reason for shifting the distribution of some newspapers in Ghent from bpost to PPP. It was in fact actually "a consequence of the agreements on the press contract and therefore not related to quality issues", Mr Meire wrote in his e-mail to the CEO. "We both know that this is not the real reason", Mr Meire repeated later in his email.