The former boss of supermarket chain Jumbo stayed in touch with a controversial car salesman known as the “auto dealer of the underworld” even after making a written pledge to cut all ties with the man, a court has been told.

Frits van Eerd was speaking on the first day of his trial in which he is accused of taking bribes from Theo E., who brokered some of Jumbo’s sponsorship deals with cycling and motocross teams.

Both men face charges of money laundering and documentary fraud in the case, which follows an investigation by the tax office’s financial crimes unit FIOD into Van Eerd’s business dealings.

Police found €448,000 in cash when they raided Van Eerd’s home in Veghel, Noord-Brabant, and his offices three years ago, some of which was stored in a bag in the fridge.

Van Eerd was unable to explain when asked in court why he had kept the money in his kitchen. “It just seemed like a good place to store that money at the time,” he said.

E. is alleged to have bribed Van Eerd with gifts including luxury toolboxes, motorcross bikes and a vintage Mercedes, but the CEO insisted he had paid for all the items in cash. E. initially described them as gifts but later said he had been paid, adding that Van Eerd “couldn’t be bribed”.

“Bragging”

Judges asked Van Eerd why he had continued to do business with E. even after signing a letter agreeing to stop working with him, following an earlier fraud case in 2014 in which both men were suspects.

“If I’d known then what I knew now, I would never have done it,” he said. But both Van Eerd and E. denied that E.’s business was being used to traffic cocaine, which prompted the initial investigation.

Prosecutors cited a tapped conversation between E. and a convicted drug dealer in which E. said he had given Van Eerd €25,000, on the understanding that Jumbo would sponsor a road racer from Drenthe for several hundred thousand euros.

E. claimed in court that he had been “bragging”, while Van Eerd denied the existence of any such deal.

Bike in toilet

Van Eerd was also asked about an allegation that Jumbo agreed to stock an energy drink as a favour for E. “That’s not how it works in our company,” he replied.

The former CEO reacted angrily to a suggestion by the chair of judges that he was a “hoarder” whose warehouse was cluttered with sports equipment. “There was even a motocross bike in the toilet,” the judge observed.

Van Eerd replied: “I had a storage area beyond the workplace where I kept the bikes. That building was no longer in use. It’s not true that people stumbled across a motocross bike when they went to the toilet.”

Sports sponsorships

During Van Eerd’s time as CEO Jumbo grew to be one of the biggest supermarket chains in the Netherlands after taking over cut-price rivals such as C1000 and Super de Boer.

The company also became one of the Netherlands’ biggest sponsors of cycling, motor sport and motocross, reflecting Van Eerd’s own passion for racing. Jumbo was one of the early sponsors of Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen.

Van Eerd stepped down in September 2022 when the allegations first came to light and formally resigned in March 2023, but has vowed to clear his name in court.

The supermarket chain ended its sponsorship of cycling, motocross and speed skating, including the Jumbo-Visma tour cycling team, at the end of 2024, partly because of the corruption investigation.

The hearing in Groningen is expected to last three days.