King Willem-Alexander went to the FBI years ago because of a revelation by the weekly magazine Privé, says editor-in-chief Evert Santegoeds. “They never found out.”
Evert Santegoeds is in the New Revu and in it he talks about his impressive career in showbiz journalism. The editor-in-chief of Privé has already released quite a few scoops into the world in his life and they often just came his way, for example when he was out in Amsterdam.
Villa Eikenhorst
Evert’s most beautiful story? “The time I was eating out at an Italian restaurant and started talking to two couples at the table next to ours. They asked when they would come to the Privé. And whether we might like a bottle of wine.”
Those alcoholic drinks led to indiscretion. “At the end of a very pleasant evening, one of those men told me that he worked in Villa Eikenhorst, the new home of Willem-Alexander and Máxima at the time.”
To the FBI
That employee of Villa Eikenhorst turned out not to be discreet at all. “He had pictures of that. Was that perhaps something for me? Jesus, how wonderful. I turned that into a twenty-page piece.”
The Oranges were pissed about it. “The entire royal family was of course furious – it later turned out that Willem-Alexander took those photos to the FBI to find out who had taken them. They never found out.”
Bloody hate
Willem-Alexander hates him, says Evert. “The Royal House hated me in any case ever since I reported in 1985 that something had happened between Willem-Alexander and some blonde here in the Amsterdam Hilton, where we are now. That was my first court case.”
So he doesn’t have to count on a ribbon. “No, that won’t work out anymore. Don’t worry, royalty reporters who think they belong to that family are doing something wrong. And the fact that Albert Verlinde does have one is not due to his time behind the desk at Boulevard.”