Wednesday brought de Volkskrant the contents of some internal meetings of the Auxiliary Alliance Foundation, which showed that Sywert van Lienden and his associates were aiming for millions of profit early in the mask negotiations in order to become “screaming rich”.
I had to process that. I only knew the expression ‘screaming mad’, I had never heard of ‘screaming rich’. But maybe it was because I make my living writing and not scamming. Anyway, after the linguistic astonishment came the indignation, but also an enormous relief. I suddenly realized that there were now several sunny sides to that whole mouth cap business. First of all, that the grabbers have been caught red-handed and that they get their money’s worth, which is nice news in a world that is intertwined with injustices. Another plus is that we now have that one episode of Buitenhof in which Sywert sat down to plead his mouth cap innocence (but was subsequently run over several times by the fact-laden forklift truck Twan Huys) to be able to look back with even more glee.
But the biggest bright side is the role that Saskia van Huijgevoort played, or rather, did not play in the whole affair. Van Huijgevoort was initially the intended fourth partner and briefly worked for the Auxiliary Alliance Foundation, but dropped out when she realized that the rest was all about money. She found it unacceptable as a non-profit organization to abuse the goodness and benevolence of third parties. She tried to convince the boys to transfer the profits to health care, but they were not interested. And so she emailed them on April 17, 2020 that she was withdrawing, because she was „… not interested [is] in contributing to a (partly) commercial organization that relies on the backbone of a foundation in times of crisis”.
Some in my circle were surprised at her decision.
“She refused millions!” said friend B. “Is she crazy or something?”
He forgot for a moment that Van Huijgevoort refused not so much millions as the theft of them.
“She did the right thing,” said my neighbor across the street. “But why does it feel so… strange?”
Maybe, I thought, because we’re not used to it when people still have a moral compass. That there are still young people in the circles around The Hague with a conscience, and that they act accordingly.
Now we just have to get used to the fact that some people do sometimes do the right thing. And also to consider what our surprise says about the world in which we live.
Ellen Deckwitz writes an exchange column with Marcel van Roosmalen here.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 15, 2022