October 20, 2014

Houses of pension fraud Krol seized

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:53 pm

Celebrity laywer Oscar Hammerstein must have been out of the spotlight for too long. Volkskrant reports that even though the foundation Vrienden van de Gay Krant (Friends of de Gay Krant, a gay paper) claims not to have money to spend on legal counsel, they have managed to get Hammerstein (400 euro per hour) to seize two of Krol’s houses for them.

The foundation is being besieged by the Dutch Ministry of Education, which wants to get subsidies back that were earmarked for an online meeting place for teenage gays, but which Krol allegedly used to fund his other enterprises during his stint as foundation chairman. In turn the foundation felt Krol should pay their debt as it was he who got them into this mess.

One of the two houses is Krol’s villa in Eindhoven which he wants to sell for 860,000 euro, which includes a bar, a sauna, a hair salon and an obscene amount of marble. Financial gossip mag Quote has photos. The ministry’s bill is apparently only for 206,833 euro.

Krol’s party 50PLUS, who run on a platform of milking the young (read: poor) to give to the elderly (read: not so poor), have accused Volkskrant and AD of ‘damaging’ Krol. Considering that the man who allegedly robbed his employees of their pension funds has not been convicted, nor even prosecuted, they may have a point. On the other hand, the return of Krol in parliament to replace a sick colleague has led to an increase of projected votes of 50% in the polls (read: 1 seat) according to Maurice de Hond.

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August 25, 2014

Henk Krol refuses to pay back subsidies

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 2:46 pm

gaykrant-aliFormer parliamentarian Henk Krol refuses to pay back subsidies that he allegedly used to bankroll his sex shop GayTel.

According to AD, the Ministry of Education is knocking at the door of the foundation Vrienden van de Gay Krant (Friends of de Gay Krant, a gay paper) to get their money back. The foundation has demanded that former chairman Krol pay up. The foundation has accused him of bad management. Krol refused to comment.

AD wrote in April this year that Krol used “the subsidies as his private ATM”. The subsidies were meant to build an online meeting place for teenage gays called 18min.eu. In August 2008 a supplier of IT services for Krol’s companies complained to Krol about unpaid bills, to which Krol responded: “We need new bills that aren’t addressed to Gay Krant, Best Publishing Group or GayTel, but to the foundation.”

AD is unclear about whether the 206,833 euro they mention is the entire subsidy or just the part that was stolen.

Last October Krol quit his seat in the Dutch parliament (50PLUS, party for the elderly) after allegations emerged that he had failed to pay pension premiums for Gay Krant employees.

In 2009 Krol won the State Award for Gay Emancipation for his “fundamental contribution to the acceptance of gays in the Netherlands”.

(Image: Fok.nl)

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April 15, 2013

Pensioner needs to make do with 4000+ euro a month

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:17 pm

A pensioner named Gijs Koekenbier (69) has become the butt of jokes after NRC Handelsblad published the story of his financial ‘woes’.

Mr Koekenbier has had to cut back from 4430 euro a month to 4260 euro (after taxes!), which started a litany of complaints. “We used to visit the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam five times a year, but now we have to limit this to twice a year. We have had to cancel the NS Voordeelurenkaart [Dutch rail discount card—ed.]. We’ve also decided to drink less wine. Two glasses a night instead of half a bottle is nice too.”

People who are not as well off as Mr Koekenbier reacted furiously. They saw his attitude as exemplary of the ills caused by neo-liberalism, the babyboomers (Retecool) and by the party of the elderly, 50PLUS (Volkskrant).

50PLUS is a party that tries to improve the position of the elderly, run by Henk Krol, former publisher of Gay Krant, and Jan Nagel. The Dutch elderly are relatively affluent, with an average household net worth of 245,000 euro. This is largely due to the fact that when the 50+ crowd bought their houses, they got the type of mortgage that one pays off, while young people do not repay their mortgage loans and are on the whole in the hole.

Meanwhile, there is such a thing as poor pensioners and they are being hounded by the government for benefit fraud. The number of pensioners that fraudulently claim singles’ benefits instead of couples’ benefits has almost doubled in the past five years, or so Sociale Verzekeringsbank claims. NRC quotes the Ouderenombudsman as saying, “People who see each other regularly do not know whether that counts as being a couple or not. We feel fines should not be given as long as the rules are unclear.” Fines for benefit fraud used to be 10% of the amount received in error, but have been upped this year to the full amount. In other words, one has to pay back the balance twice!

The minimum wage in the Netherlands is currently 1469 euro per month after taxes. A state pension for a couple is 1414 euro (707 euro per partner).

(Photo by Derek Gavey, some rights reserved)

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