In ‘In De ban van Rian’ Rian van Rijbroek is nothing but a perpetrator ★★★☆☆

At the beginning of this month, 74-year-old entrepreneur Gerard Sanderink heard that he was no longer allowed to manage his ICT company Centric. “You are incapable of making rational decisions,” he was told. What happened? In short: Rian van Rijbroek happened. This woman pretended to be in January 2018 News hour as a ‘cyber expert’. This controversy had apparently escaped the headstrong CEO Sanderink. Shortly afterwards he teamed up with the ‘cyber charlatan’, and promptly turned his private life and business upside down.

Investigative journalist Angelique Kunst, who works for the regional newspaper Tubantia works, previously wrote the book There’s only one boss here about how Sanderink’s career derailed. After that, Kunst made the much-listened-to podcast Under the spell of Rian.

Strange jumps

Sanderink turns out not to be the first to be ‘under the spell of Rian’. Previously, she made other men with a lot of money (but not nearly as much money as Sanderink) make strange jumps that damaged their companies. She deserved this.

But who exactly is this charlatan and what drives her? This riddle makes Van Rijbroek a suitable figure to dedicate a podcast to. The information Kunst received is very fascinating and surprisingly good use has been made of voice actors. Still, this is an uncomfortable podcast to listen to.

In the first episode, Kunst speaks with the two men who offered Van Rijbroek her first appearance as a self-proclaimed cyber expert in a BNR radio broadcast. They describe the (then) 48-year-old woman who is their guest in diminutive words. She wears a ‘short skirt’, a ‘leather jacket’ and a ‘sweater’ with ‘a little cleavage’.

Hateful

That condescending choice of words, unfortunately, sets the tone of the podcast. The way Van Rijbroek is spoken of is sometimes almost hateful. For example, the second episode in which Van Rijbroek’s school days in which she was bullied is discussed in detail is simply called ‘Puistenkop’. Painful.

Later a psychologist, who has never spoken to Rijbroek herself, reports that he thinks she has ‘many characteristics of a psychopath’. And so could be someone who was born with an abnormal brain structure. That suggestion doesn’t change the tone of the podcast creators. For example, the men of BNR, who received a confused story from Van Rijbroek in their radio broadcast, call them ‘victims of Rian’. Van Rijbroek is simply the perpetrator.

It would have made the podcast less unsympathetic, less one-dimensional and, above all, much more fascinating if an attempt had been made to really get to the bottom of this enigmatic impostor.