Belgian police have raided the offices of Anderlecht and the Belgian football association in relation to a money-laundering investigation involving agents and transfers.
An Anderlecht spokeswoman told the broadcaster VRT the club are cooperating fully, while a spokesman for the Belgian FA said police had taken away transfer documents from its headquarters.
A spokesman for the federal prosecutor said: “We had some questions for the agents who took care of the transfers. It is a question of money laundering.”
Prosecutors are also reported to have raided an agent’s office in Brussels.
It is understood that among the transfers being investigated is the transfer of the Serbia striker Aleksandar Mitrovic to Newcastle in 2015. The club declined to comment.
The prosecutor’s spokesman declined to give details of the three raids in Brussels on Wednesday. He said they were not linked to the wide-ranging investigation into match-fixing and fraud that rocked the Belgian domestic league last year after the national side’s third-place finish at the World Cup.
The raids come at a miserable time for Anderlecht, historically Belgium’s most successful club. Dismal form has prompted a fan revolt that saw the club fined and docked points when crowd trouble forced a match at rivals Standard Liège to be abandoned. They then sacked Fred Rutten after only 13 games in charge.
Now the two-times winners of the Cup Winners’ Cup and the 1983 Uefa Cup winners are on the brink of failing to qualify for European competition for the first time in 55 years.
