Brussels - Mr Paul Vanden Boeynants, a controversial former Belgian prime minister who had been convicted of tax fraud, died yesterday aged 81.
St Mary's Hospital in Aalst, Belgium, said Mr Vanden Boeynants, who had been hospitalised since undergoing open-heart surgery in early December, died of complications from pneumonia.
The son of a butcher who once headed Belgium's national butchers' federation, Mr Vanden Boeynants entered the Belgian parliament in 1949. A Christian Democrat, he led the Belgian government between 1966 and 1968, before resigning over a linguistic conflict between Belgium's French and Dutch-speaking populations.