Rotterdam council sacks building officials over corrupt payments

Two civil servants have been dismissed in Rotterdam for corruption after an investigation found they accepted gifts from contractors working on city building projects.

The sackings were confirmed after prosecutors told the council executive that a fraud investigation had revealed “substantially more serious” allegations than were initially suspected.

The prosecution said a total of 11 people and six companies were implicated in the fraud inquiry. The NRC newspaper quoted sources who said the companies submitted inflated estimates with the help of the civil servants.

One of the officials, a project manager, used a company he set up to support promising young footballers as a slush fund to channel payments from a building firm working on cultural renovations.

After he took early retirement, the prosecution service began investigating allegations that he and a colleague had accepted bribes and forged documents, in breach of the law and the city’s code of ethics.

A third colleague was dismissed at the end of 2023 in connection with the criminal investigation.

Houses and business premises in The Hague, Echt, Capelle aan den IJssel and Nieuwekerk were searched in the course of the inquiry. They include the home of one of the civil servants, who both worked in the City Development department.

Boijmans van Beuningen

One of the projects was the removal of asbestos from the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. An earlier investigation by NRC found that the council had paid at least €3 million too much for the project.

The company that won the contract. Brabant-based A van Liempd, employed four people at the time, only one of whom was qualified to supervise asbestos removal.

The company based its estimate on the assumption that 5.7km of air vents would need to be stripped, but less than half the installation was found to contain asbestos. It also promised to use an innovative technique to contain carcinogenic materials, but carried out most of the work with standard methods, NRC reported.

A lawyer for the company would not comment because of the ongoing investigation.