Online bank Bunq was reprimanded last Thursday by the Amsterdam court because it wanted to hear ex-employees under oath who it suspects of leaking information to NRC.
The judge rejected the bank’s request for a ‘preliminary witness examination’ of two former employees who made negative comments about the bank on social media or had knowledge of issues within the bank that NRC reported on. According to the judge, Bunq was guilty of a “fishing expedition”.
A preliminary witness hearing is a legal procedure intended to gather evidence for a later trial, during which witnesses are examined under oath. Bunq wanted to investigate, among other things, whether the two former employees had violated their confidentiality agreement by talking to the press. According to the judge, that request sounded too much like fishing for sources and “the preliminary witness examination is not intended for that purpose,” according to the decision.
According to the judge, Bunq’s lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm had not properly substantiated or made concrete the suspicions that he wanted to raise in the preliminary witness interviews. Bunq has been ordered to pay the legal costs, a total of approximately 5,500 euros.
Bill peeping
In the summer of 2024, NRC published an article about abuses at CEO Ali Niknam’s Amsterdam online bank. NRC spoke to four (former) employees who admitted that they had been guilty of ‘account peeping’, secretly viewing other people’s financial data. Account peeping is a violation of the banker’s oath, for which employees can be brought before the Banking Disciplinary Committee.
Immediately after publication of the article, Bunq requested NRC to provide the names and details of the four (former) employees who allegedly cheated unauthorized on other people’s payment details. For reasons of source protection, the newspaper did not want to share those names.
In the following weeks, two former employees were approached by Bunq employees and a lawyer, who suspected that they were the source of the article in question. In addition, Bunq engaged a detective agency to investigate possible sources of NRC and former employees.
The ex-employees were asked to make a statement before a notary. They would have to explain their behavior and that of colleagues who allegedly cheated on accounts, but also about the alleged contacts with NRC. After the two ex-employees refused, Bunq requested a preliminary witness hearing.
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‘Witch Hunt’
In two consecutive court hearings in October, the former employees explained why they did not want to be subjected to such an interrogation. The request was a form of “scaremongering” by colleagues and former colleagues. Bunq wants to “send the signal that if you speak negatively about Bunq, there will be consequences.” One former employee explained how much stress she had experienced due to the ongoing legal pressure from her former employer. “It’s a witch hunt. It haunts me, it won’t let me go.”
NRC was present at the hearings as an involved party and pointed the judge to the European anti-SLAPP directive that was adopted last year. This should prevent excessive and aggressive litigation by parties – mainly intended to silence sources and media.
“We increasingly see that heavy pressure is being put on media and journalists through legal steps to reveal the identity of their sources,” says Jasmijn de Zeeuw of Free Press Unlimited, an organization that stands up for press freedom. “That pressure also shifts to sources or quoted experts themselves, who are intimidated with the threat of lawsuits. Sources then often withdraw. This case is a nice confirmation that the court is not intended for fishing expeditions and that it pays not to submit to attempts to silence you.”
Bunq said in a response that it has a “zero tolerance policy for (ex) employees who violate the rules.” The bank is “legally obliged to do so,” a spokesperson emails. “After receiving signals of possible violations of the banker’s oath and the duty of confidentiality, Bunq asked the judge to be allowed to question the violators. We are surprised by this ruling, because previous similar cases have ruled differently. We are therefore considering further steps.”
Earlier this year, another preliminary witness hearing was allowed by the judge. A cyber expert – not an employee of Bunq – whose name was mentioned in the same article about account peeping, ruled that Bunq was running “a major security risk” by giving all its employees access to customer data. He will soon have to answer questions about this in court.
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