Three men who were paid by the municipality of Rotterdam to combat radicalization and promote integration have siphoned off these subsidies for years and invested in a cheese factory in Morocco. A Rotterdam radicalization official – the right-hand man of former mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb – privately provided a loan for this project. This is evident from research by NRC. Parties in the Rotterdam city council want clarification from the council.
The subsidy fraud was to be dealt with in a criminal case in the Rotterdam court last month, after a judicial investigation that lasted seven years. Three days before the hearing announced the functional public prosecutor’s office to have made a deal with the three suspects. In exchange for a guilty plea, they accepted community service orders of up to 140 hours and fines of up to 25,000 euros per person.
The justice department decided to settle the case through a criminal order, because the investigation had lasted for years and the trial was expected to take a lot of time. This would “unnecessarily burden the capacity of the court and the Public Prosecution Service.” In February 2024, the ministry still considered a criminal trial desirable: “Although the facts are now quite old (2010 to 2018), prosecution is appropriate to expose the seriousness of abuse of the foundations for their own financial gain.”
Due to the judicial settlement, the content of the case remained out of the public domain. The Public Prosecution Service is not making any further statements about it “due to privacy considerations”, while the municipality of Rotterdam says it has no idea about the fraud case: “We have not been informed about which organizations and subsidy flows the fraudulent actions took place.”
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Whistleblower
NRC spoke to sources about the criminal investigation called Barometer, which revolves around three Moroccan Dutch people from Rotterdam welfare work. One of them was also a municipal councilor. The trio came up with a commercial plan years ago: they wanted to produce ‘Gouda’ cheese in Morocco.
To this end, they opened a factory on an industrial estate near the Moroccan city of Berkane. They named the company Kaas Moulouya, after a river in that region. According to reports in Moroccan media the factory has an area of 1,243 square meters and approximately 100,000 euros of equity was invested in the company.
The first indications that the financing of the cheese is in shambles reached the Rotterdam Court of Audit in 2014. The independent institute receives a report from an anonymous whistleblower in possession of NRC. The whistleblower mentions the names of the cheese entrepreneurs and states that they use subsidies from the Platform Foreigners Rijnmond (PBR), the largest migrant umbrella organization in Rotterdam, as a “cash register” for their commercial project in Morocco.
Money was passed back and forth and then cash was withdrawn, for example. The flows thus disappeared from view
Because of these and other suspicious signals, the Court of Audit decided to investigate PBR. In 2015 it draws the conclusion that ‘self-enrichment’ cannot be ruled out. The cheese factory remains unmentioned in the report, because nothing about it can be found in the administration.
“We had to formulate it carefully, but it came across as one big deception operation,” says then Auditor General Paul Hofstra. “Although PBR organized activities, only part of the subsidies went towards them. The other part was shifted back and forth and then withdrawn in cash, for example. This is how the money flows disappeared from view.”
Quiet
Hofstra sends the report to the Public Prosecution Service and insists on measures, but a large part of the municipal council wants to drop the matter. After all, the Court of Audit had found no hard evidence of fraud. The PBR board resigns, the platform changes name and then it becomes quiet about the issue.
In the meantime, there are other concerns in Rotterdam politics: young people are leaving for Syria to join the terrorist movement IS. In large municipalities, a lot of money is made available to combat radicalization and new agencies are being set up by private individuals who will focus on the problem.
This also applies to the cheese entrepreneurs. With their Attanmia foundation, where two of them are directors, they will provide training for Moroccan-Dutch mothers and fathers. They are taught how to protect their children from extremism.
Attanmia’s courses are highly rated by an evaluation committeewho states that the training made parents “more effective” in their parenting. Even King Willem-Alexander comes to visit, because the foundation receives money from the Oranje Fonds. The other lender is the municipality of Rotterdam.
Aboutaleb
The official responsible for the preventive approach within which the training is subsidized is a former politician with Moroccan roots. This good acquaintance of then mayor Aboutaleb has been working for the Security Directorate since January 2015.
According to sources, the official acts as the mayor’s ears and eyes in the Muslim community, visits all mosques and builds networks to receive tips about radicalization. Aboutaleb describes him later in the city council as “the person I have sent so often on missions to undo all kinds of things in this city that sometimes cannot tolerate the light of day. Successful, all those missions are successful.”
In exchange for guilty pleas, the suspects accepted community service and fines of up to 25,000 euros per person
What the municipality does not yet know is that the official knows the three cheese entrepreneurs well privately. He has been friends with one of them for more than 25 years. He privately lends this friend 10,000 euros and it is invested in the cheese factory, he informed through the municipality. NRC. The municipality answered a series of written questions, also on behalf of the civil servant. It concerns “a personal loan that was repaid a year later.”
At the same time, the official also has to deal with cheese entrepreneurs in terms of subsidies. Until 2014 as daily manager of the Rotterdam sub-municipality of Noord, where he annually paid out 130,000 euros from his welfare portfolio to another organization of the good friend, the Noord Plus foundation. And from 2015 onwards from his role as a radicalization officer, in which he has to deal with Attanmia, controlled by the two other cheese entrepreneurs. The choices with which organizations the municipality should collaborate to combat radicalization are made by his team. The municipality tells NRC that the official had no involvement in “the financial side” of the subsidy, but was “involved on the substantive level”.
Fraud
In 2018, the Public Prosecution Service announced that it was tracking a large-scale subsidy fraud. Attanmia appears to be one of the organizations investigated. In the same year, the civil servant received publicity for a completely different reason: The Telegraph writes that he has ties to a controversial Islamic organization, something that is firmly disputed by the municipality. In a council debate, Leefbaar Rotterdam then asked whether the discredited official also had something to do with the ongoing investigation into subsidy fraud? No, Aboutaleb assures the council in the debate. The official has “nothing to do with it at all.”
Aboutaleb has barely made that statement before the police call the official for an interrogation. Shortly after the council debate in September 2018, he must explain as a witness about the loan to the cheese entrepreneur and tell what he knew about the malpractice. Nothing at all, he tells NRC. The loan was a courtesy and furthermore he was “not involved in any way.”
Aboutaleb is then also told that his right-hand man has been heard in the fraud investigation in the field of radicalization. But he will never correct that before the council. Given current knowledge, has the municipal council been properly informed? “With the knowledge gained after the interrogation, we know that the official was heard as a witness because of a personal loan to a friend,” the municipality said in a response. There is “no reason to think” that he had “wrong intentions” with the loan. The municipality knows him as a “knowledgeable and honest colleague”. After the witness interview, he was no longer approached by the police.
Deal
The three cheese entrepreneurs are being prosecuted because they allegedly pocketed subsidies from 2010 to 2018. According to the Public Prosecution Service, with their foundations that were officially involved in integration and deradicalisation, they maintained “poor administration with false invoices”. The judiciary will complete the case with the criminal orders in December 2024.
Because the investigation took so long, the municipality can no longer be compensated as a victim of the fraud: the period for this has now expired, the municipality says.
The three suspects refuse questions NRC to answer. They disconnect when contacted by phone.
Former Audit Office director Paul Hofstra still has many questions. According to him, the case shows the lack of control mechanisms at the municipality over the awarding and spending of subsidies. “How could those three siphon off money so easily?” According to Hofstra, the role of the radicalization officer also raises questions. “If he had an indirect interest in the cheese factory, he cannot at the same time be involved in subsidies to the same entrepreneurs.”
Rob van Eijbergen, expert in the field of organizational integrity, endorses this. “If, as a civil servant, you provide a loan that is linked to a cheese factory and then have to deal with the same cheese entrepreneurs in a subsidy relationship, you must at least report this to the municipality. So that others can look at that subsidy. Otherwise you create the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Even King Willem-Alexander came to visit, because the foundation received money from the Oranje Fonds
The largest coalition party Leefbaar Rotterdam demands clarification from the city council about the “opaque subsidy network” and the role of the radicalization officer. “This matter stinks enormously,” says party leader Simon Ceulemans. “We hoped that a lawsuit would finally make it clear to everyone what this sophisticated fraud network looks like. Now that the lawsuit has been stopped, this is all in danger of remaining under wraps. We do not accept that.”
D66 also wants to know from the council who was involved in the fraud case. “Why didn’t we as a council know all this?” asks D66 member Ingrid van Wifferen. “And is it permitted and desirable for a civil servant to be so close to subsidy recipients?”
A council debate is planned in a week and a half.
It is unclear whether the factory is still running. The last reports about Cheese Moulouya date from several years ago. These are photos on Facebook of cheese boards that are distributed at a Moroccan agricultural fair. “Nice reactions and satisfied customers,” reads the caption of one of the fraudulent cheese entrepreneurs.
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