All five aldermen resign from Tiel council amid allegations of criminal activities
All five aldermen of the Gelderland municipality of Tiel resigned on Wednesday after an NRC report last weekend regarding the sudden departure of former mayor Frank van der Meijden in March 2025.
According to the newspaper, the CDA mayor left after just a year in office after repeated clashes with aldermen over closing drug labs and coffeeshops that violated tolerance rules. A confidential document from Van der Meijden alleges that aldermen in Tiel were involved “in matters of criminal and administrative law.” The newspaper did not mention names or other details.
After the article’s publication, the two PRO aldermen in Tiel, Dave Verbeek and Jur Marringa, proclaimed their innocence and requested an independent investigation into the allegations, De Gelderlander reported. But according to Verbeek and Marringa, the other three aldermen and acting mayor José van Egmond refused to cooperate. So the two PRO aldermen resigned.
The three remaining aldermen - Remco Dijkstra (VVD) and Frank Groen and Carla Kreuk-Wildeman of Partij van de Burgers - resigned during a city council meeting on Wednesday evening.
According to Wim de Boer, faction leader of Partij van de Burgers, an “unsafe working situation” arose for the aldermen. The NRC article gave rise to “various suspicions, rumours, and insinuations,” and the aldermen were unable to respond “without crossing administrative boundaries,” he said to Omroep Gelderland.
The local VVD faction gave a similar statement, saying that alderman Dijkstra stepped down for the sake of “social safety.”
That leaves Tiel with only acting mayor Van Egmond in its municipal executive. The negotiations for forming a new coalition after the municipal elections in March were still ongoing, though they have now also come to a standstill due to this crisis. Van Egmond will soon meet with the King’s Commissioner in Gelderland, Daniël Wigboldus, to discuss how to proceed.
