Has someone really removed the signature from this painting in the last 12 months?

Cannes Enchères, from France, sells on 7 July 2018 as lot 300 a "20th century Belgian School, ca. 1912" portrait of Emile Verhaeren, estimated at 300 to 400 Euro.

The work has a landscape on the back, dated to 1912.

A portrait of Emile Verhaeren, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate and known friend of many of Belgium's most progressive artists of ca. 1900 (including Ensor and Van Rysselberghe) is always interesting, and a fair chance to find a painting by a great artist.

This one has a few problems though. For starters, how do we know that this is Verhaeren? Yes, he looks somewhat the same, but Verhaeren is always portrayed with a "pince-nez", glasses without the earpiece which get pinched on the nose, but the person in this portrait has regular glasses instead.

More worryingly is that the painting was for sale last year in Prague, at Antikvity Praha, for 500 Euro. It was then identified as Verhaeren as well, and as "possibly French". The work had a different frame, and most remarkably, it had a signature. On the back, it had also a monogram FB with the date 1912. Sadly, I can't decipher the signature, something like "Ferdinand" or "Friedmond" (?) "Beiker" or "Reiker" (the monogram may be FR, although FB is more likely). I haven't been able to find the painter this may refer to.

And now, both the monogram and more importantly the signature are erased, leaving only the date? Now, if the signature was apocryphal, then most likely the date was apocryphal as well, and getting rid of one but not the other is weird. And if the signature was not apocryphal but indicated a different origin or otherwise was problematic, then too bad, but don't remove it. In any case, this leaves a very bad taste to the mouth and is a good reason not to buy this painting, as it is now suspect in every way...

You can see that they have had to remove everything, going down to the bare canvas, to get rid of the signature, so it most likely was original, not a later overpaint. Which makes this a willful and shameful act of vandalism.

UPDATE: again for sale as "Verhaeren" at Cannes Enchères on 13 October 2018, now for 200 to 300 Euro.