April 16, 2015

Rabobank kills book containing accusations of art theft

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 2:05 pm

rabobank-ben-kraan-architectenThe court of The Hague has rushed to the aid of Dutch bank Rabobank when it censored the book ‘De Verpanding’ (The Pawning) last Friday.

The book, subtitled ‘Art Disappears Where Rabo Appears’, describes the dealings of two ‘art entrepreneurs’ (as Volkskrant calls them) with the Special Cases department of Rabobank.

The authors claim Rabobank stole art works and chased the art collections of art traders, says NRC. Interestingly, the book was published in March with almost no publicity (at least none that I could find), but Rabobank thought it important to sue the publishers nevertheless. The court of The Hague ordered the book to be taken off the market with the goal of protecting the privacy of Rabobank employees who were named in the book. An anonymised reprint may be in the works. The publishers have asked buyers to return the book for a refund.

Meanwhile De Verpanding has been scanned and made widely available through the Internet. In an age where bankers are considered unconvicted criminals by many, such a response should have been foreseen by the bank.

The court of The Hague told 24 Oranges it expects the written verdict to be available from rechtspraak.nl somewhere in the course of next week.

(Photo by Ben Kraan Architecten, some rights reserved)

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September 16, 2013

The Netherlands has finally become a police state

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:18 pm

Rhetoric? Offensive sloganeering? Have I finally gone off the deep end? No, I am just getting a pun in there. Volkskrant reported last Saturday that the biggest employer in the Netherlands is the police.

In 2012 the police provided jobs to 63,778 people. They passed the military which was the biggest employer in 2011, but had to cut down their numbers due to budget cuts.

The top 5 large employers in the Netherlands are:

  • The police, 63,778 employees
  • The military, 61,749 employees
  • Rabobank, 41,402 employees
  • PostNL, 33,284 employees
  • Air France-KLM, 31,189 employees

According to Volkskrant their top 100 of companies employs about 1 million people in the Netherlands. Their distribution follows a power curve, the top ten employs a third of that million. According to Statistics Netherlands there were 8.68 million people working in the Netherlands in 2012 and 0.66 million unemployed citizens. The self-employed made up 1.25 million of people working. And there were 9.24 million jobs in 2012.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

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July 14, 2013

Companies rank Dutch banks as barely sufficient

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:16 pm

One in three Dutch companies wants to break up with its bank, but only one in six thinks this is possible, Z24 reports.

The business news site commissioned a study by DVJ Insights to find out how over 500 entrepreneurs feel about their banks. Most Dutch businesses manage their finances through either Rabobank, ABN Amro or ING, which control about 88% of the market. Of the other banks, German Deutsche Bank is the biggest, or rather, the least small. The big three received grades of around 5.7 out of 10 from their clients—the lowest passing grade. Deutsche Bank, which according to Z24 wants to get rid of its Dutch customers, received a 4.

The article doesn’t mention if any of the smaller banks got high grades.

A third of entrepreneurs is considering switching banks, but about half of them think it would be difficult. A reason given is that they also have a private account with the same bank.

One of the reasons businesses are unhappy with their bank is that banks are reluctant to provide loans. In the past two years a third of businesses requested a loan from a bank, but in 64% of the cases these loans were denied.

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August 6, 2012

Bailiffs refuse to do bank’s dirty work in mortgage debt cases

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:59 am

Rabobank has been sued by a bailiff in Utrecht, GGN, because the bank tried to have it collect outstanding mortgage debts without a court order.

Last Friday the court announced it had asked the Dutch Supreme Court for advice.

The case seems to hinge on the fact that the contracts for the actual loans are of a different type than the mortgage contracts. The latter are drafted by a notary, which gives them greater weight. (The Dutch law speaks of ‘onderhandse akte’ and ‘bovenhandse akte’ respectively.)

Normally bailiffs are only allowed to force payment of a debt (by threatening to sell posessions or by actually selling them) with a court order. Apparently the ‘weightier’ type of contract confers the same power. Other bailiffs have also refused to execute Rabobank’s loan contracts. If Rabobank loses, it must secure a court order for every individual debt.

The case revolves only around debts for houses that have both already been sold and that have been sold for less than the market value. Rabobank admitted according to Z24 that this concerns about 100 cases each year.

Rabobank is one of the few major banks on the planet that wasn’t involved in the near-criminal subprime market that caused the global financial and economic crisis we are currently in, but you have to wonder if maybe it felt left out when you read this.

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February 18, 2012

Dutch banks won’t employ anti-skimming hook

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 5:56 pm

Banks like ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank refuse to fit their ATMs with special anti-skimming devices that have proven successful on ticket vending machines, Webwereld reported last Wednesday.

This despite the fact that, according to the same publication, skimming is still very much a problem in the Netherlands. In January the police caught a Romanian gang of skimmers that stole from the bank accounts of thousands of people.

Dutch Rail and Amsterdam’s public transport company GVB claim that since they introduced the so-called anti-skimming hook, their ticket vending machines have no longer been misused by skimmers.

The hook lets you insert your bank or credit card. If skimmers manage to remove the hook, the entire machine shuts down.

ING and Rabobank claim that they employ their own anti-skimming technology, ABN Amro says that it isn’t easy to fit existing machines with the hooks. Bank cards both chips and magnetic strips on them, the latter being susceptible to misuse. Banks have started a campaign to encourage consumers to use the chip rather than the magnetic strip. The latter cannot fully be replaced, as magnetic strips are still required in countries like the USA which have yet to adopt the chip-based technology.

(Photo of an anti-skimming hook discovered during a police raid, by Politie Haaglanden)

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February 23, 2009

ATM use on Sunday banned

Filed under: Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm
Rabobank ATM

The War on fun and practicality strikes again — and punishes old people. In the wee town of Scherpenisse, Zeeland, the ATM shuts down on Saturday night because the owner of the building is a Reformed Protestant. This means that Sunday is the day of the Lord and “taking out money is absurd.” The Rabobank, who operates the ATM, considers its machines open for business seven days a week.

The talk of the town is whether the owner can actually keep shutting the ATM down on Sunday, which makes life harder for old people.

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo: cwi.nl)

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December 13, 2007

Getting a kroket with your mobile phone

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:29 am
kroket1.jpg

The Rabobank together with junk food chain Febo are making it possible for people to buy food using a mobile phone. It is a beta test.

As of Monday, 17 December hungry Rabobank clients who meet certain conditions can dig in to some Febo junk food on the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam by paying with their mobile phone. Some three to four Febo restaurants will be equipped to deal with mobile phone payments soon.

There’s a few catches: only hungry Rabo Mobiel clients can use this wireless payment service. And they also need to have a phone that supports Near Field Communication (NFC), which are apparently not easy to come by. Of course, the Rabobank says it plans to do something about that.

And then I wonder about payment problems, extra fees and all that. If anyone can actually do this, please share your experience with us!

(Link: webwereld)

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