Count Leopold Lippens

Leopold Lippens was born in 1941 into a family whose members included his father, also mayor of Knokke, and his grandfather, a politician and former governor-general of the Congo who was made a baron by Leopold III in 1936; Lippens inherited the title on his father's death in 1986. He moved into his father's old office as mayor in 1979 and held it until his death. By his own account he knew Jackie Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, and he became friends with Donald Trump over golf. In 1990 he banned "frigobox tourists" who brought their own lunch to the beach. He stepped back for health reasons in November 2020, was found to have leukemia, and died on February 19, 2021, at 79, during a council meeting he could not attend. His brother is the banker Count Maurice Auguste Lippens.¹²

The Tolpaertpolder Inquiry

In January 2020 the West Flanders prosecutor's office in Bruges opened an investigation into whether Lippens was guilty of a conflict of interest. The municipality wanted several hundred homes built in the Tolpaertpolder, which required rezoning agricultural land. Audit Vlaanderen, an agency of the Flemish government, had received information that Lippens had taken part in council debates on a part of the polder in which members of his family, including his children, had interests, and found that he should have recused himself.³

X-Dossier Allegations

In the X-Dossier investigation under Judge Jean-Marc Connerotte, the witness X1, Regina Louf, named Leopold and Maurice Lippens, with Paul Vanden Boeynants and Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, among her most violent abusers, and described abuse at apartments in Knokke. The witness X2 said she had been at parties with underage girls in villas in Knokke, including Lippens's, and at the Hotel Cromwell, with his friend Etienne Davignon. Lippens was never charged.⁴