A group of 46 victims filed a report on Thursday afternoon against the self-proclaimed ‘ex-spy’ Guido Blaauw from Goirle for fraud. They donated money to a ‘charity’ and would receive a book in return. After repeated postponements over several years, the book was actually supposed to be delivered on September 11 this year, but that deadline was also not met. In total, approximately 570 people participated in the campaign and more than 16,000 euros was donated.
Blaauw’s book is called ‘No current too strong – Enemies of the State of the Netherlands’ and is said to be about his time at the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and other intelligence services. People would receive the book if they made a donation of at least 27 euros to a good cause: people who remained behind after the evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban returned to power in that country. Omroep Brabant previously wrote that there is no evidence that the money actually ended up in Afghanistan. Also, no one has had a book yet.
Vagueness about delivery
That book was initially scheduled to be published on March 18, 2021. Publication was subsequently postponed several times. To ‘prove’ that his book was really on the way, Blaauw posted a screenshot on Twitter in July this year of an email that allegedly came from a printing company. The screenshot shows that the first 600 books have been delivered and 19,400 books have been put in stock at the Centraal Boekhuis. Blaauw has concealed the name, email and address details of the printing company.
But the question is whether that email from the printing company is real. In August, one of Blaauw’s mailboxes was hacked and emails were leaked. This contains the sender of the email and the address details of the printing company. The email appears to have been sent by another email address of Blaauw himself. The printing company is called ‘Drukkerij Veenhuizen’ and with address ‘Address hjfhf’. There is no printing company with this name and the address does not exist either.
The website of the support campaign stated that Blaauw would offer the book for sale via Bol.com, among other things. But according to that store, this is not the case: “The item is not for sale with us and has not been. It is not known to us.”
Guido Blaauw’s response
In a response, Blaauw says that the publication of the book has been postponed several times because discussions are ongoing with new possible publishers and because his mail server has been hacked. In his response, Blaauw does not substantively address questions about which publisher is printing the book and which is distributing the book. “Under no circumstances will I announce that now, only once the first books have been delivered to the donors,” Blaauw writes.
When asked whether the leaked version of the above-mentioned email is authentic or whether he can otherwise tell who the real printing company was in his version, Blaauw says: “The hacker has been guilty of a criminal offense and has also done a lot of turned upside down and manipulated and placed online. As a result, I have once again been enormously vilified and opposed in many areas.”
He does not say who the printing company was in his original email. If Blaauw did let us know, Omroep Brabant could contact him and check whether there had been previous contact with a publisher. Now that Blaauw does not want to say this, Omroep Brabant cannot verify this. About what happened to the money, Blaauw writes that he is having an external accountant prepare a report that will demonstrate that the money did indeed end up in Afghanistan.
In his response, Blaauw further writes that he first announces the shipping dates for the donors to themselves. “That is in the very short term.” Blaauw also says that the book will be available in stores ‘from mid-November’, but he does not mention the year.
Omroep Brabant tried to get in touch with Guido Blaauw and spoke to someone who is reporting the ‘ex-spy’. You can see that in this episode of HOE..?