BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian prosecutors have dropped their case against former directors of Fortis, 10 years after the Belgian-Dutch bank’s collapse during the global financial crisis.

FILE PHOTO: Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis Chief Executive Herman Verwilst and Chairman of the Board Maurice Lippens (R) attend a group's information session for shareholders in Brussels August 20, 2008. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Brussels prosecutors said that they had decided not to pursue charges against seven ex-directors because it had not found sufficient proof that they had wilfully given over-optimistic information to shareholders.

“If we want to prove fraud then we need to show they knowingly attached too low a risk to the sub-primes, in other words were too positive... It is difficult to say that they should have known better,” said prosecutor Ine Van Wymersch.

She noted that Belgian insurer Ageas (AGES.BR), the legal successor to Fortis, was set to pay shareholders 1.3 billion euros by way of compensation.

Part of the reason for the pursuit of the ex-directors was to secure damages for Fortis shareholders who had lost their money.

Seven ex-directors, including former chairman Maurice Lippens and former CEO Jean-Paul Votron, were accused in 2013 of misleading investors during Fortis’s purchase of part of Dutch lender ABN AMRO and before its 2008 collapse.

Allegations by the prosecutors revolved around whether communications to investors about Fortis’s exposure to U.S. sub-prime assets were insufficient or too late, such as at the time of a capital increase when Fortis bought part of ABN AMRO.

The seven would have been the first in Belgium to face trial over banking failures during the crisis, which also forced bailouts for Franco-Belgian group Dexia (DEXI.BR) and Belgian company KBC (KBC.BR).

Fortis, once one of Europe’s largest banks, got into trouble after paying a top-of-the-market 24 billion euros ($27.4 billion) to buy the Dutch operations of ABN AMRO just before the credit crunch struck.

Shareholder groups have complained that Lippens and Votron repeatedly assured markets that Fortis’s balance sheet was strong and that it would not be changing its dividend policy.

In June, 2008, Fortis scrapped its interim dividend and sold new shares to prop itself up before it collapsed and was broken up in October 2008. </s> A Belgian court will give its verdict Monday on Salah Abdeslam, the last surviving suspect in the Paris Islamist attacks, over a bloody 2016 shootout with police in Brussels that led to his capture.

Prosecutors asked at the trial in February for Abdeslam and his co-defendant Sofiane Ayari to be jailed for up to 20 years if found guilty on charges of terrorist-related attempted murder and possession of banned weapons.

Neither Abdeslam, who is being held in jail in France pending a separate trial over the 2015 Paris attacks in which 130 people died, nor Ayari is expected to be in court in Brussels for the verdict, a court spokesman told AFP.

Belgian security forces will mount a major operation around the imposing Palace of Justice building in Brussels for the verdict, which judges are due to start reading out at 0645 GMT.

Abdeslam, 28, a Belgian-born French national, was transported to the court from France for the first day of the trial amid tight security including a helicopter escort, while Tunisian national Ayari, 24, is in jail in Belgium.

On the first day of the trial, Abdeslam proclaimed that he would only put his “trust in Allah” and accused the court of being biased against Muslims.

He then refused to attend the rest of the proceedings.

Three police officers were wounded in the gun battle after police acting on a tip-off over the Paris attacks raided a flat in the Forest area of Brussels on March 15, 2016.

Abdeslam was arrested three days later in the largely immigrant Molenbeek area of the Belgian capital, near his family home.

On March 22 suicide bombers from a cell linked to the Paris attacks killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more at Brussels airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital.

Investigators say Abedeslam’s arrest spurred the Brussels bombers to bring forward the attacks, which had originally been planned for a later date, as they feared they could be captured.

Prosecutors have said that DNA links Abdeslam to the apartment in the Forest district of Brussels where the shooting took place, but not to the weapons themselves that were used.

After Abdeslam refused to return to court for the trial in February, his lawyer Sven Mary sought the case’s dismissal on a technicality over how the judges were named to investigate the gun battle, and said media leaks had denied him a fair trial.

But lawyers for police wounded in the gun battle accused Abdeslam of “mocking” the trial.

One of the injured police officers was still suffering from after-effects including brain lesions, epileptic fits and vision and balance problems.

An organisation representing victims of the Brussels attacks and their families has asked for symbolic damages of one euro from the trial.

The Belgian trial is a prelude to a bigger one that Abdeslam will face in France at a later date over the November 13, 2015, Paris attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Abdeslam’s brother Brahim was one of the suicide bombers.
Ten years after the collapse of Belgian financial group Fortis in the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the prosecutor in Brussels decides to drop the case against seven former directors. The prosecution argues that it found insufficient evidence that they knowingly misled shareholders with over-optimistic company information.