Crime boss ordered to repay nearly €18m in blackmail cash

Friday 13 July 2012

Dutch crime boss Willem Holleeder has been ordered to repay nearly €18m which he is said to have made from blackmailing three businessmen.

The money, calculated at exactly €17,957,932.47, is said to be the amount Holleeder obtained from blackmailing property magnate Willem Endstra and two others.

Holleeder, the Netherlands' most notorious criminal, was released from jail at the end of January after serving six years of a nine-year sentence for extortion and blackmail.

Third party

According to the Telegraaf, Holleeder's lawyer Stijn Franken said immediately he is to appeal against the Haarlem court ruling, arguing the money was not paid to Holleeder, but to another property speculator Jan Dirk Paarlberg.

Paarlberg was jailed for 4.5 years in 2010 for his role in the blackmail of Endstra.

A spokesman for the public prosecution department told news agency ANP 'it does not matter' how Holleeder pays back the money, as long as he does so.

Holleeder was earlier jailed in the 1980s for kidnapping beer magnate Freddie Heineken and is still under investigation in connection with a number of gangland killings.

© DutchNews.nl