
Dutch businessman accused of bribing Google director
Dutch businessman Rudy Stroink is being prosecuted for briging the director of Google, the Financieele Dagblad reports. According to the newspaper, Stroink paid 1.7 million euros in bribes in order to get the Google data center established in Eindhoven. He has to be in the court in Almelo on onday.
The Public Prosecutor confirmed that two individuals and two companies are being prosecuted for paying 1.7 million euros in bribes to a large American company, but would mention no names. According to FD, these two individuals are Stroink and his wife. They are suspected of money laundering, bribery, forgery and membership to a criminal organization.
The suspicious transactions were made between July 2008 and March 2010. Stroink was head of TCN at the time and led negotiations with Google director Simon Tusha.
Earlier this year Tusha admitted that he was bribed by TCN in the Netherlands and Evolved IT in the United Kingdom. According to him, these companies also helped to hide the transactions from the authorities.
Google denies that this has anything to do with the data center. In a response the company states that negotiations for the data center only began after Tusha left.