Gom van Strien, who will start as a scout in The Hague on Monday at the request of PVV leader Geert Wilders, is associated with a fraud case involving Utrecht Holdings, a subsidiary of Utrecht University and the UMC Utrecht hospital.
This is evident from documents in the possession of Utrecht Holdings NRC.
Van Strien says in a response that he is aware of the issue, but denies the accusations. Geert Wilders has not been informed by him, he reports. “If this comes out, I will take action against the university because then it will only be about damaging my name,” said Van Strien.
The fraud hit the news this spring, after a press release of Utrecht Holdings. He reported on March 12 that he had reported fraud and bribery involving two employees and a former employee. Names and positions were not mentioned. Documents from Utrecht Holdings now show that Van Strien is the former employee involved. He was a director of Utrecht Holdings until mid-2009. He has been a senator for the PVV since 2011.
Utrecht Holdings did not reveal exactly what had happened in March. It was stated that both employees who were still employed had been suspended.
From the documents about NRC it becomes clear that Utrecht Holdings filed a report after an investigation by Deloitte Forensic & Dispute Services. This agency was called in after signals of possible irregularities were received in November 2021 surrounding investments in several spin-off companies.
Utrecht Holdings is the Knowledge Transfer Office of Utrecht University and the UMC Utrecht academic hospital. It sets up companies to commercialize the university’s discoveries. The proceeds flow back to Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht.
Deloitte released its report on November 23, 2022. In it, the agency describes – in short – how Van Strien and his successor transferred shares of spin-off companies to an external company, Hereswint BV. Their wives each owned 32 percent of the shares in this company. The other shareholders were a friend and former neighbor of Van Strien, and his sister. It would have yielded Hereswint around two million euros in dividend payments between 2006 and 2018.
Van Strien and his successor concealed the identity of Hereswint’s shareholders, according to Deloitte, who also wrote that the supervisory board of Utrecht Holdings knew nothing.
According to Van Strien, when he heard about a report, he asked for clarification but never received an answer. “A letter did arrive from the university with a number of blatant inaccuracies. I wrote back a letter completely refuting everything. After that I didn’t hear anything anymore. I assumed this matter was off the table.”
Did his wife indeed own 32 percent of Hereswint’s shares? Van Strien: “I won’t go into that.” He says he knows that his successor has a problem. “He has been suspended. I know that. But yeah, for the most part I don’t know anything about that.”
Marcel Evers, lawyer for Utrecht Holdings, told NRC in a response that his clients do not make substantive statements about the declaration and the legal procedure. “They refer to a press release that was distributed on March 13. The report is in the hands of the Public Prosecution Service.”
The report has been submitted to the Functional Public Prosecutor’s Office, a spokesperson confirms. “The Public Prosecution Service cannot make any further announcements at this time.”
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