Sywert van Lienden and his business partners may be prosecuted for swindling the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS). The Rotterdam District Court did not go along with the request of the three associates that this suspicion should be dropped because, according to them, the state knew exactly that they could make a profit from the mouthpiece deal.
On trial in the criminal case are Van Lienden, Camille van Gestel and Bernd Damme. They are suspected of fraud, embezzlement, forgery and money laundering surrounding the mouthpiece deal during the corona crisis. The men managed to make millions from that deal.
The first, preliminary hearing in the criminal case began Thursday with a debate over whether the men should be prosecuted for defrauding the ministry. Officials knew they were doing business with a commercial organization rather than a non-profit foundation, the lawyers argued. The prosecution disputed that.
The court concluded that at this stage, it cannot yet be ruled that a conviction for fraud cannot ultimately follow, in a criminal case that runs to more than 17,000 pages. "After all, an important question is what this ministry and its employees knew when they entered into the mouthpiece agreement and when they knew it," the judge said.
Head of Jut
Van Lienden said at the start of the hearing that he has been condemned in advance by the media in this case. "I am the head of Jut. My family and I suffer," he said Thursday in court, at the start of the hearing. At the end, Van Lienden, who reacted emotionally and irritably at times, said he is innocent.
The prosecutor's office (OM) is also prosecuting their personal holdings and the joint company Relief Goods Alliance. Van Gestel spoke in court of a "people's crusade. He said he has already been publicly condemned. "We obviously have to hang, left or right," he said.
Damme said he is deeply in debt. "I have been cancelled and have had to deal with vandalism and death threats," he said.
The three men struck a deal with the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) at the start of the corona pandemic in the spring of 2020 to supply 40 million mouth caps from China. Van Lienden had publicly stated beforehand that it was working on a non-profit basis. Afterwards, it turned out that the associates executed the order on behalf of their commercial company Relief Goods Alliance instead of their Relief Goods Alliance (SHA) Foundation. Through this route, they made millions of euros in profit.
At its core, simple
"For the umpteenth time, I have to start at the beginning again," Van Lienden told the sentencing judge. "You are not the first to whom I have to tell my story." The criminal case could be long, but Van Lienden called it "basically a simple case. "I think basically this case could be settled in an afternoon," he said.
The court president said he wanted to keep the momentum going. "This case does not involve the question of whether it is morally reprehensible to earn 100 million with a sham story. The court does not want to answer that question." Indeed, that question has been answered - according to the court - "many times with a resounding yes.
The defense objected to the prosecution for defrauding the ministry. 'The state was not defrauded,' the lawyers say. Officials knew they were doing business with a commercial organization rather than a non-profit foundation. "The state knew the ins and outs. The question of whether there was a profit was irrelevant. It didn't matter."
Civil case
The criminal case is separate from the civil lawsuit pending before the court in Amsterdam. In those proceedings, both the Dutch state and SHA's new management are claiming back from the men an amount of about €29 million, equal to the profits made from the mouthpiece deal.
In the civil case, the state's attorney argued two weeks ago that the business owners intentionally defrauded the state. In doing so, he quoted from chats the men sent to each other and their partners. 'Now really round!!! No more money worries," Van Lienden sent to his own partner.
