The renovation of the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum and De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam, which cost hundreds of millions of euros, may involve fraud and corruption. This is evident from research by NRC.
Internal e-mails, minutes, confidential reports and conversations with a dozen people involved show that a group of civil servants had awarded contracts to often the same companies for years. According to an internal memo, there were vague payments, incorrect invoices, orders that were paid for but not carried out and quotations that were only submitted after the work had already been done.
One of the civil servants issued orders to a company from which he received money at the same time. NRC’s findings have prompted the municipality of Rotterdam to have an investigation carried out by an external forensic accounting firm. In anticipation of the results of that investigation, the official was suspended last week.
Real Estate Department
NRC has investigated the integrity within Urban Development in recent months. It is one of a total of six municipal services, which is responsible for, among other things, municipal real estate. Boijmans and De Doelen are housed in buildings owned by the municipality, which manages and maintains the buildings.
The suspended civil servant gave 26 orders to an installation company from Krimpen aan den IJssel. This in turn transferred a quarter of a million euros to two (sports) consultancy companies that the civil servant ran in addition to his job at the municipality. According to the municipality, the civil servant concealed the additional positions and payments at his work.
The management of Real Estate, part of Urban Development, appears to have raised the alarm at the end of 2020 about possible fraud in the renovation of cultural institutions and wrote the critical memo about it. At the time, the management of Urban Development refused to have an integrity investigation carried out into the signals from Real Estate. The concerned officials were told to drop the matter. Only after questions from NRC last month did the management take action.
National Criminal Investigation Department
The renovation of the Boijmans in particular has been a headache for the municipality for years. The costs rose to 223 million euros and the renovation took longer than planned. The museum’s doors will be closed until at least 2029.
The National Criminal Investigation Department has also been looking into possible abuses for over a year, sources around the municipality report to NRC. When asked, the National Public Prosecution Service, which includes the National Criminal Investigation Department, said: “The Public Prosecution Service cannot make any statements about possible ongoing investigations by the National Criminal Investigation Department.” The suspended civil servant says that he has always kept his business side activities and his work for the municipality “100 percent separate”.
Read the research story from Friday evening: The signs of corruption were clear. Yet Rotterdam looked away
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