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April 23, 2011 Taken from: NIS News - Chipshol wants parliament to investigate corruption among judges AMSTERDAM, 23/04/11 - Project developer Chipshol director Peter Poot is demanding that the two judges who deliberately frustrated the company be prosecuted. He is also asking parliament for an investigation of corruption among judges in the Netherlands in general. Poot announced Friday that he has made a police report against Pieter Kalbfleisch for perjury, conflict of interest and official corruption. The former judge resigned last week as head of the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa). Kalbfleisch did not want his personal situation to have a negative effect on the NMa, the authority said at the time. Nearly two years ago, Chipsol had launched proceedings against another judge, Hans Westenberg. But the company never heard anything about this police report. The Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) is constantly saying that an announcement will be made soon on the question of whether and when Westenberg will be prosecuted, but appears to want to sweep the case under the carpet, according to Poot. Kalbfleisch and Westenberg were both vice-presidents of the district court in The Hague. Poot suspects that corruption and favouritism also occurs in other courts. He believes that most judges are reliable, but "a large portion are not." A parliamentary investigation into the judiciary should demonstrate this, in his view. In the 1990s, Kalbfleisch arranged that Westenberg handle a dispute between Chipsol and a minority shareholder in the company. This shareholder, like Westenberg, was a friend of Kalbfleisch. Westenberg found in favour of the minority shareholder. Ever since the case in 1993, Poot and his son have fought against the two judges. They were for years seen as a pair of Don Quixotes. Recently, however, a clerk of the court came out with a statement confirming their story. This woman is an ex-partner of Kalbfleisch. Poot has requested the district court in The Hague for all the verdicts ever made by the former judges Westenberg and Kalbfleisch. He wants to see if it can be concluded from these that they also behaved unlawfully in other cases. The Lower House is staying on the sidelines for now. A parliamentary investigation of the judiciary appears to be an overly sensitive proposal for most MPs. |