Cop could face 5 years for selling police info to criminals

The Public Prosecutor demanded five years in prison against former police officer Mark M. in court on Tuesday. He is suspected of selling confidential information about criminal cases to criminals for years and then laundering the money he made from it. The Prosecutor also wants to ban him from working in a public function for 10 years, NOS reports.

According to the Prosecutor, M. made at least 79 thousand euros by selling confidential police information to criminals, and then laundered that money. The Prosecutor expects that the amount is actually much higher, but could not find sufficient evidence to prove it.

The 31-year-old former cop told the court that he did nothing wrong financially. He insists that his extra income came from borrowing money to invest in his own company. M. did admit that he obtained confidential information from the police systems, but still claims that he did so as a hobby, not to sell it to criminals.

Four other suspects in this case also heard the sentence demands against them on Tuesday. Against a man suspected of acting as intermediary between M. and the criminals, the Prosecutor demanded 3 years in prison. Two criminals suspected of buying information from M. could face a year in prison each, and a third eight months.

M. worked for the police since 2009. He started at the criminal investigation department, but was later transferred to the traffic police when security service AIVD would not give him a "declaration of no objection". After his transfer, M.'s access to certain police systems should have been revoked, but that did not happen. As a result, M. was able to search police cases for four years after losing his security clearance. During that time, carried out searches in the police systems over 28 thousand times and copied numerous documents that he should not have been able to see.

M. was arrested in October 2015 when a car dealer turned out to have police information that he should have no access to. He was officially dismissed from the police in June 2016.

In January 2016, former Justice Minister Ard van der Steur told the Tweede Kamer that M. damaged at least 10 criminal cases by leaking information from their files. Former police chief Gerard Bouman called him "the most rotten apple of all time", according to NOS.