Jean-Pierre Van Rossem (29 May 1945 – 13 December 2018) was a Belgian stock market guru, economist, econometrician, convicted fraudster, author, philosopher, public figure, politician, and member of the Belgian and Flemish Parliaments.
Life and career
Van Rossem studied economics at the Ghent University in 1963–67. With his final term paper De omloopsnelheid van het geld : theoretische begripsbenadering en praktische toepassing in België (English: The velocity of money: Theoretical approach to understanding and practical applications in Belgium) he won the International Scholarship of Flanders-prize and was able to study two years of econometrics under Nobel Prize winner Lawrence Klein at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Moneytron
Van Rossem became famous as a stock market guru with Moneytron, an investment company that could offer apparently endless returns. His customers included the moneyed of Europe, including the Belgian royal family.
Van Rossem also claimed that he had developed a model that could predict the stock market and beat the capitalist system. He invested for the very wealthy and accumulated 860 million dollars for himself. At his most successful, Van Rossem owned a yacht, The Destiny, 108 Ferraris and two Falcon 900 aircraft. Later everything was sold to pay debts. He also printed false shares.
In 1991, he was sentenced to five years in prison for fraud; according to him, it was "a way to fuck the system." In prison, he wrote a personal diary, Gevangenisboek (English: Prison Book), which was later published.
Formula One
Van Rossem sponsored and later became the majority owner of a Formula One team in 1989, Moneytron Onyx, which placed 10th of the 21 teams. The biggest success he achieved with his team was third place at the 1989 Portuguese Grand Prix with driver Stefan Johansson. The team signed an agreement with Porsche to use the V12 that Footwork then went on to use. However the deal was cancelled when Van Rossem announced the deal on Belgian television prior to the initial announcement. That night he made the news again, as he'd driven his Porsche to town square and set fire to it.
ROSSEM
In 1991, Van Rossem founded his own libertarian protest party ROSSEM, according to many, to gain political immunity, because of his problems with the Belgian Courts. The name of the party stood for ‘Radicale Omvormers en Sociale Strijders voor een Eerlijker Maatschappij’ ('Radical Reformers and Social Warriors for a Fairer Society'). Under the slogans ‘Geen gezwijn, stem libertijn’ ('No nonsense, vote libertine') & 'Geen gezeik iedereen Rijk' ('No whining, everybody rich'), ROSSEM got 3.2% of the votes, or 3 seats in the Belgian Federal Parliament in the Parliamentary elections of 24 November 1991. Rossem himself had a seat in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives from November 1991 to May 1995 and the Flemish Parliament from January 1992 to May 1995.
In 2014 he went back to the elections with his party ROSSEM but lost with only 0.3% of the votes for the Belgian Federal Parliament and 0.2% for the Flemish Parliament.
Controversies
At the swearing-in ceremony of King Albert II before both houses of Parliament in 1993, he shouted "Vive la république d'Europe, vive Julien Lahaut!" (English: "Long live the republic of Europe, long live Julien Lahaut!"), a reference to communist leader Julien Lahaut, who had shouted "Vive la république!" in 1950 when King Baudouin took the oath, and was assassinated a week later. Van Rossem was republican. In 2004, Van Rossem was a guest on the Dutch television show Het Grote Complot – De Wereld Verklaard and offended the Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende by calling him a "dick".
In popular culture
Jean-Pierre Van Rossem had cameo roles in the comics series The Adventures of Nero by Marc Sleen, more specifically the albums Nerorock and De Man van Europa. Around the same time he was also featured in his own celebrity comics series, scripted by himself and drawn by Erik Meynen.