BRUSSELS -- Two people who threw custard pies at Microsoft chairman Bill Gates last February have been fined by a Belgian court.
The two, who were not identified, were fined by the Police Court on Monday, a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office said on Tuesday. She would not detail the amount of the fines, but the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure reported that the two pie-tossers had each been nicked 3,000 Belgian francs (US$87.72).
Gates was visiting Brussels following a meeting with world and business leaders in Switzerland when the attack occurred. Nailing bigwigs with pastry has became something of a fad in the months since, with Proctor and Gamble chairman John Pepper and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown among those getting a faceful.
On Monday in Amsterdam, Dutch finance minister Gerrit Zalm was the victim of a similar pie-throwing attack at the opening of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange to inaugurate trading in the euro. The attackers distributed leaflets saying the euro was anti-democratic and beneficial only to companies.
Copyright© 1999 Reuters Limited.
