29/5/1945
Record updated 29-May-20
Van Rossem is a well-known Flemish politician, entrepreneur and writer. In 1989 he bought the Onyx F1 team. He was convicted of fraud in 1991.
Van Rossem studied economics at the Univerisity of Gent in 1963-1967. With his final term paper he won the International Scholarship-price and was able to study two years of econometry at Lawrence Klein.
He became famous with 'Moneytron', a stockmarket investment company that could offer apparently endless returns. Van Rossem had developed a model that could predict the stock market and beat the [capitalist]] system.
His sympathies for the theories of Karl Marx did not stop him investing for the very wealthy in the world and accumulating 800 million dollars for himself.
Due to belief in the Moneytron system and also his sence of show and publicity, there came very large sums towards him. He also traded duplicated stocks, according to him, 'A way to fuck the system'.
In 1989 he bought the Onyx F1 team. He had the cars painted pink and blue and for a single F1 season was a regular figure in the F1 paddock, his long white hair and beard and his considerable girth, making him rather noticeable.
The downturn in the world economy saw him sell the team at the start of 1990 to Swiss Peter Monteverdi and Van Rossem disappeared back to Belgium.
A year later he was in jail for fraud but once released he somehow managed to get himself elected to parliament after starting his own party, Rossem, taking three seats in the lower house in 1991. He then shocked Belgium by writing a guide to Belgian brothels and upset the royal family by making loud republican noises when parliamentarians were taking their oaths of allegiance to King Albert II, just as Julien Lahout had done in 1950 at the coronation of King Boudewijn.
In 1991 he was sentenced to 5 years in jail but remained at liberty thanks to hisparliamentary immunity to prosecution. Once his immunity expired he went down and whilst inside began to write his autobiography, which became a bestseller.
After that he had a relationship with Miss Belgium, Brigitta Callens and made a living from writing for motoring magazines and doing PR work for a discotheque.
He married Nicole Annys, who passed away in 1989 and later married Rachida Bettar, with whom he had a son.
Currently, he is back at his old job of helping college students in Gent, his slogan is: 'Party on, I'll pull you trough!'
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