Royal Zoute Golf Club

The Royal Zoute Golf Club was an exclusive golf club in Knokke-Heist, Belgium, patronised by nobles and business elites with ties to the bank Societe Generale. The club had belonged to a noble Belgian statesman and banker named Count Maurice Auguste Lippens in the early twentieth century, through whom it was granted a Royal title in 1925 by the Belgian monarchy. The club's custodianship remained within the Lippens family through one of Lippens' sons, Count Leopold Lippens, who served as Mayor of Knokke-Heist.¹

In the X-Dossier, witness X1 (Regina Louf) testified she had been used as a child prostitute at a hotel-villa located at Elizabetlaan 83, Knokke-Heist, situated on the north-western boundary of the Royal Zoute Golf Club. X1's grandmother Cecile Beernaert lived at Golfpad 4, tucked discreetly behind this hotel-villa. X1 identified clients including Paul Vanden Boeynants, Count Leopold Lippens, and Jean-Michel Nihoul among those who raped and tortured her at the villa. Witness X2 corroborated these accounts, identifying the same hotel-villas surrounding the golf club as venues for sadomasochist child sex parties she attended with a magistrate identified as Karel.¹