GroenLinks is considering steps against Sam Pormes, the Drenthe chairman of the GL party in the Provincial Council. Pormes did not mention that in 2017 he was sentenced to repay wrongly received PGB funds that he received from his cousin.
“He should have reported that,” says Hannah Eigeman of the party bureau of GroenLinks. “Fraud is not acceptable as far as we are concerned,” says Eigeman, without specifying what consequences the concealment of the conviction has for Pormes. GroenLinks only received confirmation of the fraud on Friday, she says. “We are considering steps.”
Assenaar Pormes, together with his daughter, owned the care company Meskota for a few months in 2013. The very elderly cousin of Pormes purchased care from Meskota for more than 13,000 euros. However, no care was taken for this, according to the court in the judgment. And that got the cousin in trouble. Because Meskota could not demonstrate that care had actually been provided, the PGB money paid by the care office to the nephew (and continued to be paid to Meskota) was reclaimed.
Meskota only paid back after the elderly man went to court. In 2017, the judge finally ruled that the money should be paid back to Pormes’ nephew. “We are going to contact Pormes and present this information to him,” says Hannah Eigeman.
The Pormes company was dissolved almost immediately
Pormes is on Ambon. “In two hours I will leave for my father’s island in the middle of the Banda Sea,” he reports on the app. Confronted with the verdict, he explains on the app that his daughter provided the care and that there was a difference of opinion with the health insurer about accountability.
Data from the Chamber of Commerce shows that Meskota has been the sole proprietorship of Pormes’ daughter since 1991. Before the company was wound up in 2013, Meskota was a general partnership for a few months with Sam Pormes as a shareholder. In that short period of time, the nephew paid the 13,000 euros.
Care money was earmarked for other purposes
The verdict shows that Pormes told the judge in 2017 that the more than 13,000 euros was intended for completely different purposes, ‘including loan repayments’, according to the verdict. “That’s how it works when you’re family,” Pormes appts. He denies that the care money was passed on to creditors of his cousin. “Not one on one. I helped him privately with friends.”
He emphasizes that the care has been fully provided. “In parallel, he also had many problems and we also helped with that.” When asked whether the cousin transferred over 13,000 euros to Meskota, so that Pormes could pay the creditors and the cousin could get the money back from the insurance, there is no answer from Ambon.