Optima Trial Day 2: Trump Email Evidence Expected – LIVE Updates

Frank Scheerlinck starts his plea with how he met his client. “It was a disturbing call,” he says. But that call was not for Gorik V., but for R., Piqueur’s daughter. She was arrested by the police. Scheerlinck outlines how he drove to the justice building and had to take a seat in a large room where the interrogation would take place. The investigating judge was also in the room at the time. “Because I also have to read up on the possible bank fraud case,” he quotes the investigating judge.

Scheerlinck explains that after the interrogation he wanted to inform the Piqueur family, but that Ruben and Jeroen had also been arrested. “Call my husband,” R. had said. That husband is Gorik V. As chairman of Optima’s real estate branch, his house was being searched at the time.

V. was then interrogated in the case as a witness at his own request. “People forget that he came at his own request. People forget how he came to defend his own wife and, in his defense, also say what he was doing and what she was not doing. He had a small role. But should that person be sitting here now?” says the lawyer. “Is it because they could not have the daughter, for she has been purified of everything, that they tried it on the son-in-law? So that they had the whole family?”

V., as former chairman of Optima’s real estate branch, is being prosecuted for forgery for the sale of a plot of land and for late declaration of bankruptcy.