A Dutchman who is thought to have fathered hundreds of children via sperm donation has been ordered by judges to stop the practice immediately.

Jonathan Jacob Meijer was told by judges in The Hague that he will be fined up to €100,000 if he donates sperm again or if he advertises or in any way promotes his services as a donor.

He has also been ordered to provide a list of all clinics where he has donated sperm and to write to them ordering it to be destroyed, apart from semen reserved for parents who already have a child by him.

The 41-year-old from The Hague was accused of misleading hundreds of women all over the world, and may have helped create over 550 children, the Donorkind foundation, which was behind the court case, said.

The Dutch gynaecologists’ association NVOG first warned about the man, a musician, in 2017, when it emerged he had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands via 10 different clinics.

When his excessive donating became public, Meijer was placed on a blacklist, but continued to donate abroad, in Denmark and in Ukraine, and offered his services as a donor via websites, sometimes using the name Ruud. CoParent Match, Spendesperma, Kinderwunsch, Onewish, Cyros and PrideAngel are some of the organisations he used, according to the AD.

Eva, the Dutch woman at the centre of the court case, had a child by Meijer in 2018. ‘If I had known he had already fathered more than 100 children I would never have chosen him,’ she said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands is working on a central register of sperm donors and has changed the rules so that a donor can provide sperm to a maximum of 12 women, replacing the current maximum of 25 children, the AD said.

Last year the Donorkind foundation said it had identified at least 10 doctors who had illegally used their own sperm to create children in the Netherlands.

Among the high profile cases involving fertility specialists are that of Jan Karbaat, who fathered 81 children at the last count, Jan Wildschut  who fathered at least 47 and Jos Beek.