Herman Van Rompuy Rompuy was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget from September 1993 to July 1999 in the two governments led by Jean-Luc Dehaene. As budget minister, together with finance minister Philippe Maystadt, he helped drive down Belgium's debt from a peak of 135% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1993. It fell to below 100% of GDP in 2003. He was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in the 1995 general election, but as he remained a minister, he was barred from taking the seat while holding that office. After his party's defeat in the 1999 Belgian general election,
Reactions to the Panama Papers 2014 due to the "LuxLeaks" tax avoidance scandal (also revealed by the ICIJ), and hoped the extent of the Panama Papers revelations would spur countries to action. In a 2013 letter unearthed by the "Financial Times" to then-president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron said that offshore trusts should not automatically be subject to the same transparency requirements as shell companies. Some analysts suggested that these actions may affect the outcome of the referendum on UK membership of the EU. Alaa Mubarak, son of former president Hosni Mubarak, was cited