Aysel Erbudak, the former chairman of the Slotervaart Hospital, must spend a year in prison unconditionally. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal sentenced her on Friday to eighteen months in prison, six months of which were conditional.
The sentence is slightly higher than the court conviction in 2019. Although Erbudak was sentenced to a lower unconditional prison sentence of fifteen months, the automatic remission of a third of the sentence for good behavior still applied.
The court considers it proven that Erbudak stole 1.2 million euros from the hospital and committed forgery to conceal the embezzlement.
Erbudak was chairman of the board of the Amsterdam Slotervaart Hospital for seven years. In that capacity, she had the hospital pay one million euros for a resort that was being developed in Turkey. The former director has always said that this was a business project of the hospital, but the court rejects that interpretation. According to the councilors, public money was used for a private project by Erbudak. For example, close directors were not involved in the decision to invest the one million euros and the required shareholder approval was lacking.
Erbudak also tried to arrange money for project development in Turkey in various other ways. First she asked for 10 million euros from then hospital owner and business partner Jan Schram, then she attempted to borrow one million from a charity foundation for cancer research of which a fellow director was director. When that failed, she approached the Oyak bank in Turkey for a loan.
Payment via supplier
Ultimately, one million will be paid for the resort in Turkey through a supplier of the hospital. Invoices also mention goods that would be needed by the radiology departments. But the working group that selected companies within the hospital to supply radiology equipment did not have the company with which Erbudak organized the payment in mind. That company also did not supply equipment for the radiology department.
Erbudak tried to conceal the hospital’s payments for a private project with incorrect descriptions on invoices, the judge ruled.
The former chairman of the board also had the hospital pay €200,000 for an equity interest in a Rotterdam company. But those shares were delivered to a private holding company owned by Erbudak, not to the hospital. When this participation was sold, the money was also not returned to the hospital. That is why the court speaks of “unlawful appropriation”.
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This is a fairly old case. The controversial transactions took place in 2008 (the 1 million euros) and 2011 (the 200,000 euros). Those payments only came to light after her departure in 2013. In 2014, the Public Prosecution Service started a criminal investigation. In 2019, Erbudak was convicted by the court. The court speaks of a “major exceedance” of the reasonable period within which trial must take place. For this reason, the court reduces the sentence to be imposed from twenty to eighteen months in prison, of which six months are conditional. The sentence corresponds to what the Public Prosecution Service demanded. However, the court waived an appeal ban that the Advocate General demanded on appeal.
Aggravating circumstances
The court also saw a number of aggravating circumstances when determining the sentence. The money from hospitals is intended for “medical care for sick people,” the court states. “The misappropriation of funds undermines the trust that must be placed in the healthcare system.” The judges also point out that the suspect knew that the hospital was financially strapped. According to the judges, the suspect “does not yet seem to realize the reprehensibility of her behavior”, in which she only had an eye for her own financial gain, even during the trial.
Erbudak has defended that her then business partner Jan Schram paid 26 million to save the hospital in 2006 without any agreement. They always did business based on trust, with little on paper.
She never received pay during her period as chairman of the board from 2006 to 2013. She lived on the hospital’s credit card. Erbudak said about this in an interview with NRC in 2019: “Jan had an obsession with paying as little tax as possible. That’s where those constructions came from. But we always worked in confidence. (…) Afterwards we came up with a structure for the transactions.”
Erbudak can still appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court. The Slotervaart Hospital went bankrupt in 2018. That bankruptcy is completely separate from the embezzlement for which Erbudak was convicted on Friday.