Can Bouchez withhold €131 million from Brussels social housing over the Mostefa affair?

Mouvement Réformateur president Georges-Louis Bouchez said on Thursday, 3 September, that his party had blocked €131 million earmarked for the Brussels-Capital Region’s public housing agency and would keep the money frozen while Socialist politician Lotfi Mostefa remains chairman of the Foyer anderlechtois, known in Dutch as the Anderlechtse Haard. The MR confirmed the ultimatum in an official statement, while Brussels broadcaster BX1 reported that the agency could have to sell buildings to finance itself if the transfer is not approved. No final compromise had been announced when this article was prepared.

“We have blocked the allocation of the SLRB’s resources. They will not receive their resources while Lotfi Mostefa remains in place at the Foyer anderlechtois,” Bouchez said in the MR communiqué. The SLRB, or BGHM in Dutch, supervises and finances Brussels’ network of local public-service housing companies. The €131 million therefore concerns the regional system, not only the housing stock managed in Anderlecht.

That distinction matters. Bouchez is a national party president, not a member of the Brussels government, and he cannot personally cancel regional expenditure by administrative order. His leverage comes through the MR’s representatives in the seven-party Brussels coalition, led by Minister-President Boris Dilliès, also of the MR. Housing is a Brussels regional competence, currently assigned to Brussels State Secretary for Housing Karine Lalieux of the PS; neither the federal government nor the European Union decides how these funds are released. In practical terms, the announcement means the MR is withholding the political agreement needed inside the regional executive.

The immediate trigger was Mostefa’s re-election on 17 August as chairman of the Foyer anderlechtois. BRUZZ reported that a regional commissioner was continuing to exercise the powers of the chairman and vice-chairman until at least 30 November, limiting the immediate operational effect of Mostefa’s return. Bouchez nevertheless argues that the re-election sends an unacceptable governance signal while judicial inquiries remain open.

Mostefa, who is also the PS alderman responsible for housing in Anderlecht, became the central figure in the controversy after a May 2026 investigation by VRT’s Pano programme alleged political interference in the allocation of social homes. BRUZZ reported on 21 May that the Brussels public prosecutor’s office had opened a new file following the broadcast, bringing the number of investigations then associated with the housing company to four, including one judicial investigation. The Central Office for the Repression of Corruption was assigned to the new inquiry. Those proceedings concern allegations and have not established Mostefa’s criminal guilt; the presumption of innocence continues to apply.

The affair was already politically charged because Mostefa had faced scrutiny over his earlier leadership of Anderlecht’s public welfare centre, or CPAS/OCMW. During a December 2024 hearing in the federal Chamber of Representatives, he denied clientelism and said that he had met only a small number of applicants whose cases had been pending for more than six months. VRT NWS reported that members from several parties remained dissatisfied with his answers. That federal hearing concerned the administration of minimum-income support, however, whereas the present dispute concerns social housing and falls under regional and municipal structures.

After the 2026 Pano report, the Brussels Parliament established an inquiry committee. It heard more than 50 witnesses and completed roughly 143 hours of hearings before producing 26 sector-wide recommendations in July. Reporting by BRUZZ and Het Nieuwsblad showed that the committee did not agree on a clear finding against the Foyer anderlechtois or Mostefa personally. The Brussels authorities nevertheless installed a special commissioner, an exceptional supervisory measure intended to protect the organisation while reforms and investigations continue.

The competing political frames are unusually stark. The MR presents the funding hold as a safeguard for public money and says the PS must remove Mostefa before asking the region to provide additional resources. Les Engagés president Yvan Verougstraete had previously called for Mostefa’s powers to be suspended during the investigation, while Brussels N-VA group leader Gilles Verstraeten demanded an independent inquiry into what he described as a culture of clientelism and political interference.

The PS-backed decision to re-elect Mostefa points in the opposite direction: judicial suspicions should not, in that view, be converted automatically into a political conviction, particularly after the parliamentary inquiry failed to produce an agreed personal finding. Mostefa publicly thanked the board for its confidence after his re-election, according to BRUZZ. The PS’s continued support also reflects its insistence that oversight and due process should determine responsibility rather than an ultimatum from a coalition partner.

A third frame comes from the PTB-PVDA. Its Brussels group leader, Françoise De Smedt, told BRUZZ in May that the reported practices were serious and required transparency, but warned that the scandal should not obscure the shortage of social homes or become a reason to weaken public housing services. That concern is sharpened by the scale of the need: VRT NWS reported in 2024 that more than 50,000 applicants were on the Brussels social-housing waiting list, while only 1,067 homes from the previous government’s programme had been completed at that point.

This makes the pressure tactic politically potent but socially risky. Blocking money for the SLRB may force the PS and Brussels minister Ahmed Laaouej to reconsider Mostefa’s position, as BX1 reported Bouchez intends. It may also delay financing for organisations and projects with no connection to the alleged conduct in Anderlecht. The regional agency sits above multiple local housing companies, so the financial consequences cannot automatically be confined to the institution under investigation.

The confrontation lands only months into the 2026–2029 Brussels government, formed in February after 613 days of negotiations following the June 2024 regional election. MR and PS are indispensable partners in that coalition, alongside Les Engagés, Groen, Anders, Vooruit and CD&V. The government has promised tighter finances and stronger public administration, yet the Mostefa dispute forces it to choose between two commitments that are difficult to reconcile: continuing investment in badly needed housing and demonstrating that governance failures carry consequences.

The next decisive step belongs to the Brussels government rather than to Bouchez alone. It must determine whether the €131 million remains frozen, is released with conditions or is separated from the dispute over the Foyer anderlechtois. Also unresolved are Mostefa’s position after the commissioner’s temporary mandate, the implementation of Parliament’s 26 recommendations and the outcome of the judicial investigations. Until those questions are answered, Brussels social-housing policy will remain entangled with a coalition struggle over who gets to define political accountability.