Sywert van Lienden has never lacked fighting spirit. Revealed almost a year ago de Volkskrant that the media personality had become ‘treasurely rich’ with the mask trade, while always proclaiming to work ‘for nothing’. Still, Van Lienden insisted that he was not to blame. “He who laughs last, laughs best,” he told his critics.
Van Lienden was also allowed to hope that he could keep his millions. The most important ally was the Ministry of Health (VWS), which was responsible for the mega order with which the ex-official together with his partners collected around 30 million euros gross. Despite the public outcry, VWS never made any move to reclaim that money.
Last month, Minister Connie Helder (VWS) again suggested that her ministry was knowingly doing business with a commercial company, even though the outside world all along thought that Van Lienden was a philanthropist. ‘Because nothing of an irregularity has been found, there is currently no activity to recover that money,’ says Helder.
Minister Hugo de Jonge (ex-VWS) said in the same parliamentary debate that ‘everyone has been tricked’ by Van Lienden. So also VWS? Deloitte researchers must provide a definitive answer on behalf of the department.
The reluctance of VWS to take action released forces from parties that felt disadvantaged. Former employees and volunteers of the foundation took steps after the summer of 2021 to get Van Lienden and Bernd Damme from the board of the non-profit Auxiliary Troops Alliance. In their view, the charitable institution had been misused by Van Lienden and partners to secure orders and then place them in their own commercial company. In this way, the foundation would have been harmed for millions.
‘My clients do not want compensation or compensation,’ says their lawyer Marcel Evers. ‘They want the foundation to be restored, and with it the contributions they have made.’
Youp van ‘t Hek
Almost parallel to the legal steps of the ex-employees, another social initiative arose in the autumn to recover the millions of mouth masks. Youp van ‘t Hek concluded a pact with criminal lawyer Peter Plasman, who subsequently reported fraud on behalf of Randstad. Van Lienden and his partners are said to have misused the free aid that Randstad offered to Auxiliary Troops for their own benefit.
The criminal investigation that followed led to the short-lived arrest of Van Lienden, Damme and Camille van Gestel in February. At the same time, it became clear that the Public Prosecution Service was also focusing on their role as board members at the foundation. The civil law process started in August was added to the case of the seven ex-employees, who had already independently summoned Van Lienden and Damme to resign.
There are many indications that the judiciary believes it has strong evidence in both processes (criminal and civil). On Thursday, the Public Prosecution Service and the ex-employees succeeded in having Van Lienden and Damme provisionally suspended as directors of the Auxiliary Forces Alliance, even before they were heard.
‘Disappointing’, says Han Jahae, lawyer for Van Lienden and partners. ‘I explain it in such a way that the court is indeed afraid that the gentlemen will lose money, while they have always cooperated optimally to show that nothing crazy is happening.’
On Friday, the Dutch bank accounts of Van Lienden and his partners were frozen. In total, an amount of 11.5 million euros has been seized, according to the Public Prosecution Service. ‘They don’t do something like that lightly,’ says Peter Plasman. “It reinforces the idea that the Public Prosecution Service thinks it has a strong case.”
Business risk
Van Lienden’s defense has always been that he was forced to set up a secret commercial operation in 2020. VWS would have demanded that he take ‘enterprise risk’ and Coolblue also did not want the Auxiliary Troops Alliance to do business with the government.
VWS and Coolblue deny that. Internal documents also show that Van Lienden and partners themselves had the ‘key condition’ that the mega deal with VWS would run through the commercial RGA. Other, smaller deals, such as with the Ministry of Justice and Security, have also been placed with the company’s own BV and not with the foundation.
Legal pressure is now increasing for Van Lienden and his partners, although the former school leader himself still thinks that the investigation by Deloitte initiated by VWS will exonerate him. According to the client, VWS, that investigation only relates to the deal with the ministry. The Public Prosecution Service must determine whether money has been embezzled from the foundation and ex-partners have been defrauded.
It is certain that the so-called face mask affair is far from being completed, Van Lienden’s lawyer Jahae also acknowledges. “We had hoped and expected that the civil investigation of the Public Prosecution Service would make it clear that integrity had been acted upon and that that would be a turning point. Unfortunately that turned out differently.’