Claude Moniquet (born 3 March 1958 in Brussels, Belgium) is a retired French journalist (working mainly with L'Express and Quotidien de Paris) and a former intelligence agent at the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), operating extensively in eastern Europe and the Balkans.
He is co-founder and CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC). [1]
Born to a Belgian father and a French mother, he was a far-left militant until the age of 19. A few years later, he spent two years living on a kibbutz in Israel. He now describes himself as being politically to the right.
He began his career as a journalist specialising in eastern Europe, especially Poland. In the early 1980s, he was contacted by the DGSE due to his contacts in Poland. Until the early 2000s, he worked simultaneously as a journalist and an intelligence agent. [2]
He is the co-founder and director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC), [3] a strategic analysis, economic intelligence and lobbying agency based in Brussels.
In 2019, he was the head candidate of the newly formed right-wing Destexhe List for the Brussels regional elections, which got no seat. [4] Like the leader of this new party, Claude Moniquet is known for his connections with Azerbaijani caviar diplomacy and receiving financial means to promote Azerbaijani interests. [5]
The Reformist Movement is a liberal French-speaking political party in Belgium. MR is traditionally a conservative-liberal party, but it also contains social-liberal factions.
The Université libre de Bruxelles is a French-speaking research university in Brussels, Belgium. ULB is one of the two institutions tracing their origins to the Free University of Brussels, founded in 1834 by the lawyer and liberal politician Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen.
The Directorate-General for External Security is France's foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the British MI6 and the American CIA, established on 2 April 1982. The DGSE safeguards French national security through intelligence gathering and conducting paramilitary and counterintelligence operations abroad, as well as economic espionage. It is headquartered in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.
Alain Destexhe is a Belgian politician. He was a senator from 1995 to 2011, and remained a member of the Brussels Regional Parliament until 2019. Destexhe was a member of the liberal Mouvement Réformateur (MR) and represented Belgium in the World Economic Forum. He was awarded the Prize for Liberty by Nova Civitas in 2006. He was Secretary-General of Médecins Sans Frontières from 1991 to 1995, and President of the International Crisis Group from 1997 to October 1999.
The Belgian Resistance collectively refers to the resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Within Belgium, resistance was fragmented between many separate organizations, divided by region and political stances. The resistance included both men and women from both Walloon and Flemish parts of the country. Aside from sabotage of military infrastructure in the country and assassinations of collaborators, these groups also published large numbers of underground newspapers, gathered intelligence and maintained various escape networks that helped Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines escape from German-occupied Europe.
Westland New Post (WNP) was a short-lived Belgian extreme right-wing organization founded in March 1981 by Paul Latinus and members of the Front de la Jeunesse (FJ). The organization ceased to exist after the Front de la Jeunesse disbanded in 1983 and Paul Latinus was found dead in his girlfriend's home in April 1984.
Claudine Luypaerts, better known as Maurane, was a Francophone Belgian singer and actress.
Charles Michel is a Belgian politician serving as the president of the European Council since 2019. He previously served as the prime minister of Belgium between 2014 and 2019. Michel became the minister of development cooperation in 2007 at age thirty-one, and remained in this position until elected the leader of the Francophone liberal Reformist Movement (MR) in February 2011. He led MR to the 2014 federal election, where they emerged as the third-largest party in the Chamber of Representatives. After coalition negotiations, Michel was confirmed as Prime Minister of a MR-N-VA-OVLD-CD&V government. He was sworn in on 11 October 2014, becoming the youngest Belgian prime minister since Jean-Baptiste Nothomb in 1841.
The Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management is a school of economics and management, and a Faculty of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a French-speaking private research university located in Brussels, Belgium. Business education started in 1899, and Solvay was established in 1903 through a donation from the industrialist Ernest Solvay.
DRSD is the abbreviation of Direction du Renseignement et de la Sécurité de la Défense, a French security agency which is part of the Ministry of Armed Forces. It was established on 10 October 2016 out of the Directorate for Defense Protection and Security, which was founded on 20 November 1981.
The People's Party, abbreviated to PP, was a political party in Belgium. Primarily a French-speaking party, it considered itself to be to the right of the Reformist Movement, the main centre-right party in Francophone Belgium. It was often considered as a right-wing populist party. From 2016 onwards, it was considered as far-right by the Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques.
Lustre is the codename of a secret treaty signed by France and the Five Eyes (FVEY) for cooperation in signals intelligence and for mutual data exchange between their respective intelligence agencies. Its existence was revealed during the 2013 global surveillance disclosure based on documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The Jewish Museum of Belgium shooting was an antisemitic Islamist terrorist attack which took place in Brussels, Belgium, on 24 May 2014 when a gunman opened fire at the museum, killing four people. Three of them, an Israeli couple on holiday and a French woman, died at the scene. The fourth victim, a Belgian employee of the museum, later died of his injuries in hospital. Six days after the attack, on 30 May 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French national of Algerian origin, was arrested during a routine drugs check in Marseille, France, when he was found to be carrying weapons identical to those used in the shooting. A second suspect, Nacer Bendrer, was later identified and arrested.
Marie-Rose Armesto was a Spanish-born Belgian journalist. She was associate editor-in-chief for the Belgian television chain RTL-TVI.
Euractiv is a European news website focused on EU policies, founded in 1999 by the French media publisher Christophe Leclercq. Its headquarters and central editorial staff are located in Brussels, with other offices in Paris and Berlin. Its content is produced by about 50 journalists staffed in Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
On 22 March 2016, two coordinated terrorist attacks in and close to Brussels, Belgium, were carried out by the Islamic State (IS). Two suicide bombers detonated bombs at Brussels Airport in Zaventem just outside Brussels, and one detonated a bomb on a train leaving Maelbeek/Maalbeek metro station in the European Quarter of Brussels. Thirty-two people were killed and more than 300 were injured. Three perpetrators also died. A third airport attacker fled the scene without detonating his bomb, which was later found in a search of the airport. A second metro attacker also fled, taking his bomb with him. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center (ESISC) is a self-described think tank and lobbying group dealing with issues related to terrorism and security. ESISC notes on its website that its "lobbying operations can defend an industrial portfolio, the economic opening of a new market, or the political interests of a state."
Bernard le Grelle is a Belgian investigative journalist, political adviser, author, former United Nations expert and public affairs executive. He is known for his long-term investigation into the 1963, John F. Kennedy assassination. He is a member of the noble Le Grelle family.
Liberal Democrats is a minor French-speaking political party in Belgium.