The complaint, passed to the prosecutor’s office by the Special Tax Inspection office (BBI), concerns Creve Drinks from Waarschoot in East Flanders. The business, popularly known as De Wilde after the founding family, supplies beer and other drinks to a large number of catering establishments in the province and in neighbouring West Flanders. In the city of Ghent alone, where there are 1,500 food industry outlets including 800 cafes, De Wilde supplies about one in three.

According to the BBI, the scheme, which has been going on for years, involved taking cash payments for part of each delivery and only issuing receipts for part of the shipment. As many as 1,000 different customers could be involved. Last week, an investigating magistrate in Ghent issued search warrants for premises involved in the fraud, and documents were seized.

The enquiry will also examine allegations that De Wilde delivered inferior beer in vats that the company claimed to contain more expensive brands like Maes and Jupiler. Among those premises searched last week were those of the company suspected of providing the inferior beer.

According to one café owner quoted by De Standaard, De Wilde put pressure on cafes to go along with the scheme, despite the fact that it brought little or no advantage. De Wilde owns a number of cafes as well as delivering drinks, making it easier to intimidate managers.

Individual café owners could themselves face heavy fines if the Ghent prosecutor decides to pursue them as well as De Wilde. According to Luc De Bauw, directorgeneral of the industry’s representative organisation Horeca Vlaanderen, such fines could signal the end for a number of businesses, already suffering from a loss of business due to the partial ban on smoking in cafes.