The criminal case of the Public Prosecution Service (OM) against railway company NS due to a controversial tender issue in Limburg has come to an end. The Public Prosecution Service will not appeal in this case, in which the Dutch Railways was previously acquitted by the court in Den Bosch of forgery and bribery.
Two years after that verdict, the Public Prosecution stopped trying to get the NS convicted. Previously, the Dutch Railways successfully contested a fine of 41 million euros that the Authority for Consumers & Markets had imposed on the company in a court in Rotterdam. “The case is finally closed,” said an NS spokesman.
This is not without image and other damage to the Dutch Railways. The tender issue in Limburg, a transport concession with a value of more than two billion euros, was an issue in 2015. It then became clear that the Dutch Railways had acquired the right to transport in Limburg through foul play.
The issue cost then president Timo Huges the head. The Dutch Railways also lost the right to transport in Limburg to competitor Arriva. This after all kinds of irregularities had come to light during the tendering procedure.
QBuzz
The core of the case was that employees of the NS subsidiary QBuzz, which was in the race for bus transport in Limburg, had obtained confidential information about the offer from competing company Veolia. This was done via a former employee of Veolia who had secretly been employed as an advisor at a NS subsidiary.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, there was a major fraud case, in which the NS top was actively involved. Fines or imprisonment were demanded against several companies and persons, including CEO Huges. The court acquitted all suspects in December 2017.
NS did acknowledge that serious mistakes had been made in the tendering procedure and promised improvement. The company did not participate in bids for regional transport concessions for two years.
