A striking incident in the Netherlands: the army has filed a complaint against 32 soldiers who spent money intended for further training on a very expensive barbecue course. Some of them also had a luxury barbecue from the Green Egg brand. Several suspects are not aware of any harm: their commander gave permission, they say.
The barbecue course in question was paid for from the military’s personal training budget. In order to retain them for the Dutch armed forces and to be able to deploy them optimally, Dutch military personnel have been given complete freedom since 2019 to spend money on further training. In practice, according to a Defense spokesperson, it turned out that some people did not spend that amount on their personal development, but on a hobby. In this case a barbecue course of about 4,500 euros.
Declaring the course fee to the Ministry of Defense was allowed according to the (now old) rules, but keeping items for private use was not, and that is where the shoe pinches: the army has filed a complaint against a total of 32 Dutch soldiers who received a very expensive barbecue as part of the barbecue course. According to the Ministry of Defence, it is being examined whether there is an ‘unjustified declaration’.
Two files
The department emphasizes that two separate files are being examined: on the one hand, the old rules on training, which allowed Dutch soldiers to declare wine tastings, yoga lessons and barbecue courses. Those remarkably flexible rules stemmed from an employment conditions agreement from 2019, but have since been tightened: today it is no longer possible to fund ‘hobby courses’ at the expense of the Dutch army. On the other hand, there may be fraud because the military may not be allowed to declare the course fee, which included a Green Egg barbecue worth hundreds of euros.
A criminal investigation is now underway against one of the 32 military personnel for fraud and forgery. In addition, an internal investigation is also underway against all military personnel, which may lead to disciplinary measures.
“Not aware of any harm”
The investigations have taken some soldiers by surprise. According to lawyer Sébas Diekstra, who represents two suspects, his clients sincerely wonder what they did wrong. “Of course you can ask the question to what extent a barbecue course has anything to do with personal development within Defence. But these soldiers duly submitted an application that stated what the intention was and that was approved by their commander. They have fully completed the barbecue course. If they had known there would be so much fuss about this some time later, they would of course never have started it.
Spokesman Klaas Meijer of the Dutch Ministry of Defense agrees that commanders have previously approved the course. “That tells us something about how well the audit was carried out. One commander pays more attention to it than the other, but 5,000 euros for just a barbecue course is a lot of money. It was also not clear to the commanders that a barbecue was attached to it.”
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