'Rich meet Beautiful' "advertised facilitating fornication"
"Rich meet Beautiful", a dating website that linked female students up with rich men has been convicted of encouraging prostitution and that's a criminal offence in Belgium.
The website promised to line up students with older, wealthy guys who would sort their financial woes. It has now been fined 240,000 euros, while the proprietor got a six month suspended sentence.
An advertising campaign for "Rich meet Beautiful" appeared on the streets of Brussels in 2017. It offered to line up sugar daddies for university students. The public prosecutor's office decided to take the website offline, even though the website claimed it was encouraging long-term relationships and that sex wasn't the main goal of the campaign.
The Belgian court ruled that images of semi-naked women in lingerie with bra straps off the shoulder pointed to a sexual nature and not to days out and romantic dinners. Encouraging prostitution was proved. The company and its CEO advertised the facilitation of fornication. The Francophone Free University of Brussels that registered as an interested party will get 5,000 euros in compensation.