A 54-year-old real estate entrepreneur from Oss has to go to jail for two and a half years for inciting arson in a former café, fraud with energy labels and fraud. The man had previously admitted that he had committed fraud when applying for energy labels and raising invoices.
A 26-year-old Ossenaar gets a year in prison for that arson. A fellow townsman is sentenced to community service for his involvement in the energy label fraud. Two other men have been sentenced by the court to community service for insurance fraud.
The man came to his confession early last month during a court case in Den Bosch. The public prosecutor demanded three years in prison, also for inciting arson in two cafes in Oss. “This is greed in its purest form,” the officer said at the time.
Fire
In the early morning of Monday, July 24, 2017, the vacant café ‘t Fabeltje in Oss was on fire. The property had just been sold. Exactly a week later it happened again, this time in the upper part of the café.
Six months later, the fire brigade in Oss had to come into action again because of a fierce fire, then in the empty cafe De Schutskooi. The Public Prosecution Service already suspected that the suspects could earn money from it. For example, more insurance was defrauded, the court acknowledged on Friday.
Fraud
According to the court, the main suspect was also guilty of fraud when applying for energy labels. He had false invoices drawn up for, among other things, new windows and central heating systems in order to apply for (better) energy labels. He wanted to get a more favorable interest rate with this.
He also defrauded his bookkeeper, who is also a co-defendant in this case, by having him pay two false invoices. The real estate entrepreneur said earlier that he did not want to earn money from the forgeries. According to the man from Oss, action had to be taken quickly, because he felt the bank panting in his neck during the renovation plans.