Pierre Chevalier (politician)

Pierre Antoine Marie Chevalier (born 8 October 1952) is a Belgian politician and member of the Open Vlaamse Liberalen en Democraten (VLD). He is a former Secretary of State in the Belgian Federal Government and was elected to the Belgian Senate in 2003 by the Dutch electoral college. He is also a freemason. He studied Laws and Criminology at the University of Ghent before he became a lawyer. He became involved in politics early on, first as a Trotskyist, as a socialist later on, and since 1992 as a liberal. In October 2000, he was forced to resign as Secretary of State by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who is also a member of the VLD, after it became public that he had been named in a criminal investigation in Switzerland.