The supervisory board of Milieudefensie is resigning following the commotion surrounding the past of former director Donald Pols. The board announced this in a press statement on Tuesday. The council says it experiences a “lack of trust” between the employees of the environmental organization and itself.
To everyone’s surprise, Pols recently switched to steel giant Tata Steel, but left after one working day this week following a revelation in NRC about his extreme right-wing activist past.
Research showed that during his student days in South Africa, Pols was a leader of the far-right movement Afrikaner Studente Front (ASF), which, among other things, fought against the anti-racial ANC at the time of the abolition of apartheid in that country. In an interview in NRC Pols distanced himself from that past.
Crucial information was missing from resume
The news caused “great unrest” within Milieudefensie. Even more so because the organization stated that it had been aware of Pols’ past for years. According to Wednesday’s statement, the selection committee already knew about it in 2015, while the Supervisory Board stated that it was informed by Pols in 2021.
However, the top management of Milieudefensie chose not to share this with the outside world. The organization’s thousands of donors were also unaware. Milieudefensie also shared a CV of Pols on its site for years, but the organization knew that crucial parts about his years and studies in Pretoria were missing.
Jacqueline Smit, interim director of Milieudefensie, said in a response this week that she was “taken by surprise” by Pols’ “controversial past”. “And also by the fact that the supervisory board had known about this for years.” She calls what the full supervisory board provides “understandable”.
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