The judge wanted to know how tech entrepreneur Pieter Vos himself actually looks at the accusations against him. His lawyer could not say anything about it on Tuesday afternoon in a short room of the Amsterdam court.
There, Vos, himself absent for ‘health reasons’, faced the American investment company PSG Equity, who personally held the founder of the Amsterdam tech company Rodeo liable for 62.8 million euros in damage suffered in a civil proceedings. In 2022, PSG bought almost a third of the shares of the software company, as it turned out, false pretenses. Rodeo went bankrupt in April last year.
In December last year, research from NRC That Vos lied against investors, employees and commissioners about the state of affairs within his company for years. Documents, interviews with former employees and leaked chat conversations showed that Vos wrongly claimed that his company had tens of millions of turnover and thousands of customers. In reality, Rodeo only had hundreds of customers and at most it converted a few hundred thousand euros. Vos would also have forged bank statements and a contract with Tech company Google.
Immediately after the publication in NRC It announced to conduct a criminal investigation into Pieter Vos. It is potentially one of the largest financial fraud cases ever in the Netherlands. There are also a few civil matters against him, including business relationships that fox borrowed private money.
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During the hearing, Vos, through his lawyer, did not deny anything that was used to him. His lawyer mainly seemed to limit the financial damage as much as possible and hoped for ‘moderation’ of the demanded damage.
His lawyer pointed to the ‘limited capacity’ of Vos, who can no longer work ‘given all the attention in the media’ and is not entitled to unemployment benefits. His bank account would also be ‘almost empty’, according to his lawyer. Attached to his two houses in Amsterdam.
What exactly happened with the more than sixty million that PSG invested in Rodeo remains unclear. Part of the money went to Vos himself, who sold his shares to PSG and then had 21 million euros in his personal BV. From that money he bought, among other things, an expensive fleet, a house on Amsterdamse Museumplein with four parking spaces and an art collection. After the bankruptcy of the VOS private holding company in July last year, there is only 101 euros on Vos’ bank account, research by the curator showed.
The fact that Vos himself did not come to court to give text and explanation felt like a new sofaation, said lawyer Jeroen Kortmann (Stibbe), who represented the American investor. “We have a lot of questions that we have no answer to.”
To the misunderstanding of the Americans, the OM’s investigation only took action after NRC had published the case, still not led to criminal prosecution. The Public Prosecution Service announced on Tuesday that it cannot make any announcements ‘during the current investigation’.
After the bankruptcy of Rodeo, Pieter Vos disappeared Spoorloos, and then appeared again in Amsterdam. Vos has recently been spotted in the capital by local residents. Vos is also, in his own words, in conversation with documentary makers, who want to film his story. Tuesday he did not respond to a request from NRC To comment.
The Amsterdam court will rule on 30 April.