Two civil servants in Rotterdam have been fired for allegedly accepting bribes to award over-inflated development contracts, together with in relation to asbestos therapy on the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
In a briefing to Rotterdam metropolis council final month, town’s mayor Carola Schouten mentioned that following experiences that civil servants signed off contracts for greater than they need to have value, town has concluded its personal investigation.
Whereas one in every of three staff accused of fraud retired, two have been suspended and have now been summarily dismissed.
Schouten wrote that the 2 unnamed staff have been discovered to have breached the code of conduct, “accepting presents from the municipality’s enterprise contacts in change for doable preferential therapy”. They’re additionally suspected of forgery and “passive bribery” of different officers.
The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported in 2023 that considerations had been raised about potential corruption referring to constructing tasks at cultural establishments in Rotterdam, together with the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s asbestos therapy. It claimed that formal suspicions had first emerged three years earlier.
Following the publication, in 2024 Rotterdam metropolis council requested the police to research, mentioned Schouten in her briefing, and a prison investigation is ongoing.
Nonetheless, whereas one worker took early pension, town’s government board mentioned new data shared by the general public prosecutor this July prompt that the 2 others had behaved “considerably worse” than town’s inside investigation had discovered.
A spokesman for the Rotterdam head of economic affairs Diederik van Dommelen tells The Artwork Newspaper that the scenario is now a matter for prison investigation, though the staff have the choice to struggle their dismissal by way of an employment tribunal. “As a result of there’s an ongoing investigation by the general public prosecution service, we’re restricted in what we are able to say, however we’ll make as a lot data as we are able to public and share it with the elected council,” he says.
A spokesman for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen tells The Artwork Newspaper that since its 4 buildings and their renovations are managed by the municipality, they’ve determined to not remark publicly on the affair.
The museum closed in 2019 for a serious renovation and in 2021 opened its depot to point out 154,000 artworks, a big a part of its assortment of Western artwork, in addition to non permanent exhibitions equivalent to a peanut butter ground.
It was based in 1849, courtesy of donations from non-public collectors together with Frans Boijmans and D. G. van Beuningen. The “future-proof museum”, freed from asbestos, is predicted to reopen in 2029.
