No evidence of Uber bribing Dutch officials; Clearer corruption laws needed
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) dropped a hitherto unknown corruption investigation against VVD member Neelie Kroes over her lobbying for Uber, followed by a well-paid job at the taxi platform’s head office in San Francisco. It could find no prosecutable evidence and believes that the Netherlands does not have sufficient legal options to prosecute civil servants and politicians for corruption, according to research by Trouw, NRC, the Financieele Dagblad, and Investico.
The newspapers and Investico discovered that the OM launched a criminal investigation into Kroes in response to the Uber Files of 2022, in which journalists revealed that, in her cool-down period after being European Commissioner, Kroes lobbied Dutch Ministers on behalf of Uber. She then went to work at Uber’s head office in San Francisco in a well-paid position.
The OM dropped the case in December. According to the investigative journalists’ sources within the judiciary, Dutch criminal law is insufficient to prosecute the case.
The OM confirmed the investigation to the newspapers. Uber and Kroes said they were unaware of being investigated and would not comment further.
Willeke Slingerland, a lecturer in resilient democracy at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, told Trouw that the investigative services have been scrambling around “in the dark” about when corruption is punishable since the lost corruption case against The Hague alderman Richard de Mos. De Mos provided catering permits to entrepreneurs who donated to his party.
“In the De Mos case, the judge demanded as proof that there was a tangible, direct consideration and malicious intent,” Slingerland told the newspaper. “That is a classic approach to corruption. In practice, donations, in this case, large party donations, are rarely cashed in immediately. It is much more about the tangle of loyalties and preferential treatment within the network in the long term.” That is called “trading influence” in jargon, Slingerland said.
The lecturer sees elements of trading influence in the Kroes and Uber case, particularly concerning her lobby for the company and later job. But that is difficult to prosecute in the Netherlands, she said. According to Slingerland, the Netherlands is the only EU country in which trading influence is not explicitly punishable, even though various international treaties call for this.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice and Security told Trouw that the Netherlands has a “broad criminalization of bribery” and scores well in international studies on the topic.
