Drents GroenLinks parliamentary party chairman Sam Pormes (69) from Assen is again discredited. The Drenthe party board and the national party bureau are unpleasantly surprised that Pormes was convicted in 2017 for fraud with PGB funds. He never reported it to the party.
Pormes had to pay back 13,500 euros in care money from the court, because he could not justify the care provided with his agency Meskota. Pormes never reported this conviction to the party.
Chairman Fenna Bolding of GroenLinks Drenthe is shocked by the case. She calls the issue “very annoying.” “We knew nothing about this at all. This is really new to me. Sam should have reported this when he put himself forward as a candidate for the provincial list. Because that fits with the integrity you strive for as a party. And reporting such a court decision is of course part of that,” says Bolding.
The Drenthe party chairman first wants to discuss the matter with the rest of the board and the party and with Pormes herself, before she can indicate what steps will be taken against the parliamentary party chairman. “I hope to have clarity about this soon, but I also want to contact Sam first. But he is currently in the Moluccas.”
The national party board has been aware of the verdict from 2017 since yesterday. According to spokesperson Hannah Eigeman of the party office, Pormes also failed to report the matter there. She says: “An integrity statement is indeed part of a candidate procedure. The information from the judgment has not been reported by Sam before, he should have done that. Fraud is not acceptable as far as we are concerned. We will contact Sam Pormes and present this information.
Sam Pormes could not be reached for comment.
The court verdict against Pormes from 2017 was brought before the GroenLinks party board yesterday by Joop Burgerhout from Voorschoten. The man has a heated conflict with Sam Pormes about the financial state of affairs at the Moluccan foundation TitanE. This foundation works on poverty reduction in the Moluccas with all kinds of local aid projects.
Burgerhout became involved as a volunteer with the TitanE foundation in 2021. He provided a loan of 2000 euros for a nutmeg company in the Moluccas, which would help thousands of local farmers. According to Burgerhout, loans amounting to 135,000 are outstanding for this project in which sea containers with nutmeg are shipped to the Netherlands, and for which farmers in the Moluccas are paid a fairer price.
But Burgerhout does not trust the finances at TitanE, calls the cash flows at the foundation ‘extremely dubious’, and demanded openness of the books earlier this year. According to him, Sam Pormes, who has been interim chairman of TitanE since May, refuses. Burgerhout is demanding his loan back on 1 September.
Joop Burgerhout already submitted a complaint to the national party bureau of GroenLinks in June about the financial state of affairs at TitanE and Sam Pormes’ involvement in this. But spokesperson Hannah Eigeman does not make any statement about this complaint on behalf of the party board. “Anyone who wants to share a signal is referred to our whistleblower hotline, so that the correct complaints procedure can be followed. Furthermore, we do not make any statements whether or not complaints have been received, and therefore also not whether or not an investigation is underway.”
Sam Pormes has been discredited many times before. When he was a member of the Senate, from 2001 to 2006, the party board of GroenLinks had a further investigation into him in 2005. Even then, he had concealed matters from his past, or so the accusation was. For example, repeated allegations surfaced that in 1976 he had taken part in a guerrilla training camp in South Yemen. He is also said to have been involved in the Moluccan train hijacking of De Punt in 1977 and in the shooting of a police car in the Moluccan district of Assen. He also played a role in the financial disorder at the Moluccan addiction care institution Masiun, which went bankrupt, and he was accused of fraud with unemployment benefits.
All these matters had not been reported by him to the party board of GroenLinks at the time. He blamed him for that, which led to an in-depth investigation. Pormes was first expelled as a GroenLinks member on the basis of that investigation. But in April 2006, that cancellation was reversed after a won appeal by Pormes. Finally, in November 2006, Pormes left the Senate.
In 2019 he returned to politics in Drenthe, first as a committee member in the Provincial Council for GroenLinks, and later as a Member of Parliament. In the last provincial elections, Pormes was the party leader for GroenLinks. Since March he has been chairman of a two-member group.