The integrity secretary of the Party for the Animals has taken the party to court over recent integrity reports against party leader Esther Ouwehand. The integrity secretary demands correction of a press release in which the new party board writes that it has handled reports against Ouwehand and an employee carelessly and incorrectly. The requested penalty is 5,000 euros per day, the summons states.
The summary proceedings in the Amsterdam court are on October 25. The new board has “complete confidence in the outcome” and does not want to comment substantively, says board member Renée Müller.
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The previous, resigned board withdrew Ouwehand as party leader on September 9 after “reports and signals” of “violations of integrity”. The old board had received emails from a political assistant of Ouwehand through a whistleblower, containing strategies to bend the board to its will and remove a board member. Ouwehand received a lot of support from members, and the old board resigned under pressure from her lawyer.
The new board issued a press release on October 6 stating that all integrity reports came from the old board. The integrity secretary, who investigates and validates the admissibility of reports, is said to have acted carelessly and incorrectly.
In the summons, the integrity secretary says that the new board had not informed her of any supposed errors before this press release. Accusations in an email that Ouwehand sent her are said to be incorrect. The press release “lacks any factual basis, is misleading and very damaging to her,” it says. Her lawyer does not want to comment now.
The integrity secretary also informed the new board of “three reports”, the summons states. According to board member Müller, these were not new reports.
NRC previously described how the integrity secretary was put under pressure about the reports. In the summons she describes a conversation on September 6 that she had with Ouwehand and the political assistant. She had experienced this conversation as “very unpleasant”. In her eyes, the political assistant behaved “aggressively”. At the end of September, the integrity secretary called two new board members. She told them she felt “unsafe” in her position. “I can’t remember that,” says Müller.