Two civil servants in Rotterdam have been fired for allegedly accepting bribes to award over-inflated construction contracts, including in relation to asbestos treatment at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
In a briefing to Rotterdam city council last month, the city’s mayor Carola Schouten said that following reports that civil servants signed off contracts for “millions” more than they should have cost, the city has concluded its own investigation.
While one of three employees accused of fraud retired, two were suspended and have now been summarily dismissed.
Schouten wrote that the two unnamed employees were found to have breached the code of conduct, “accepting gifts from the municipality’s business contacts in exchange for possible preferential treatment”. They are also suspected of forgery and “passive bribery” of other officials.
The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported in 2023 that concerns had been raised about potential corruption relating to building projects at cultural institutions in Rotterdam, including the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s asbestos treatment. It claimed that formal suspicions had first emerged three years earlier.
Following the publication, in 2024 Rotterdam city council asked the police to investigate, said Schouten in her briefing, and a criminal investigation is ongoing.
However, while one employee took early pension, the city’s executive board said new information shared by the public prosecutor this July suggested that the two others had behaved “substantially worse” than the city’s internal investigation had found.
A spokesman for the Rotterdam head of financial affairs Diederik van Dommelen tells The Art Newspaper that the situation is now a matter for criminal investigation, although the employees have the option to fight their dismissal via an employment tribunal. “Because there is an ongoing investigation by the public prosecution service, we are limited in what we can say, but we will make as much information as we can public and share it with the elected council,” he says.
A spokesman for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen tells The Art Newspaper that since its four buildings and their renovations are managed by the municipality, they have decided not to comment publicly on the affair.
The museum closed in 2019 for a major renovation and in 2021 opened its depot to show 154,000 artworks, a large part of its collection of Western art, as well as temporary exhibitions such as a peanut butter floor.
It was founded in 1849, courtesy of donations from private collectors including Frans Boijmans and D. G. van Beuningen. The “future-proof museum”, free of asbestos, is expected to reopen in 2029.
