Criminal investigation launched over claims Babboe tried to cover up cargo bike issues

The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) has started a criminal investigation into cargo bike manufacturer Babboe, a spokesperson for the watchdog confirmed after reporting by RTL Nieuws on Thursday. The regulator wants to know with certainty whether Babboe also hid broken-down bicycles and other issues from NVWA inspectors when they visited the company's workplace.

The bicycle manufacturer has been in the news repeatedly for the past six weeks because of extensive safety risks regarding several of its cargo bike models, an attempt to fire a whistleblower, and allegations the company may have tried to keep the problems hidden from their customers.

The NVWA ordered Babboe to temporarily stop selling most of its cargo bikes in February. After an investigation, the regulator concluded that hundreds of bicycles had frames that would randomly fracture and break in recent years. Babboe management did not properly investigate the causes and took no measures, the NVWA alleged. By not reporting the problems themselves "they broke the law," the NVWA said last month.

The NVWA spokesperson said on Thursday that the criminal investigation started a few weeks ago, "because there are indications that details were withheld." Former Babboe employees told RTL Nieuws about how they had to hide broken frames in vans prior to an NVWA inspection. RTL Nieuws also has photos and audio recordings proving this.

"The NVWA was supposed to arrive at ten o'clock. So at a quarter to eight in the morning, we went there to hide everything," a former employee told RTL Nieuws about a September 2021 inspection. "We put the broken bicycles in a van, because they were afraid that the NVWA would take a walk around the place." The van was then driven further away from the inspection area.

"We had to empty the entire workshop. We loaded those frames into a van, and the scrap iron bin as well," said another employee. They hid everything that could get the company in trouble if seen by the NVWA, "and that worked out well."

Hiding the frames is "really shocking and downright disgusting," RTL Nieuws quoted the NVWA as saying. If true, it seriously compromised people's health and safety.

"If things are withheld, we cannot do our work. That is undermining and awful," NVWA spokesperson Bjorn Elsebrock told RTL Nieuws. The investigation is being conducted by the NVWA's investigative service, IOD, and the Public Prosecution Service (OM), the spokesperson said.

"This must show whether the findings actually happened."