Welcome to Dutch Rail where failing administrators are given top jobs and golden goodbyes. Annemarie van Gaal has a rail about Dutch Rail.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Take last week’s bit of news about Dutch Rail being fined €2.75m for abysmal service in 2012.

A company which is owned by the state is fined by the state and must pay €2.75m because it isn’t doing its job: think about it.

The fine Dutch Rail has to pay over 2012 will be subtracted from the €264m profit it made in the same year. That hurts. No doubt 2013 will see a repeat performance.

Real world

In the real business world this is a strange way of going about things. A CEO only has one goal and that is to make his clients happy. The happier the Dutch Rail clients are, the more they will use trains and the more profit the company makes. A good CEO knows this and an unfit CEO, and his terrible managers, should not be fined but fired.

Fines are for peeing where you’re not supposed to and shoplifting, not for a lack of effort and talent.

According to junior transport minister Wilma Mansveld the money will not go into the ‘general means’ kitty but will be spent on improvement of the railway so travellers profit from it as well. I didn’t know money used a tomtom. The light at the end of the railway tunnel is that Dutch Rail will not have to pay any fines in the next few years because any profit they make will be swallowed up by the debacle that is Fyra.

Regulator

Those responsible for the miserable state of Dutch Rail are getting away scott free. Dutch Rail director Merel van Vroonhoven, responsible for Fyra from the first ride, will be the new chair of financial services regulator AFM from April 1.

Finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem couldn’t have been more pleased: ‘She has extensive public sector experience and that is a great advantage,’ he said. What advantage is that? The Dutch banking association is happy as well: ‘Her experience will be very useful.’ Experience doing what? Keeping a sinking ship bobbing along for years? I might be wrong. Maybe she is the best person for the job at AFM. I hope so.

Van Vroonhoven’s Dutch Rail colleague Bert Meerstadt was allowed to stay on another six months as an advisor, wages intact. What he will be advising on is anybody’s guess. According to the chairman of the board, Meerstadt was ‘an exceptionably able and successful leader’. So many compliments and yet so many fines.

Annemarie van Gaal is head of publishing company AM Media and a writer and columnist.