Trust is of huge importance in the Westland tomato trade and this trust is what was abused by a commercial employee of a growers union according to the Dutch Openbaar Ministerie (Prosecution). They demanded custodial sentences for bribery, forgery and whitewashing for this former employee and two fellow suspects.
False invoices
In exchange for the lower prices the suspect is said to haven given the company of the two other suspects, the main suspect is said to themselves have received a gift of a total of 850,000 Euro, the officers of the court stated. This money was sent by the two fellow suspects to the company of the former commercial employee. False invoices were created in order to do so, according to the officers of the court.'Trust is valuable, both literally and figuratively,' the officers of the court said. They accused the suspect of breaking the trust that growers had placed in him to sell their tomatoes for the best possible prices. The officers of the court accused the two fellow suspects of bribing the suspect and participating in the whitewashing construction set up to gift the bribe to the suspect as discretely as possible.
Sentence
The Prosecution demanded the former commercial employee receive a custodial sentence of three years, of which one year conditional. They demand 40 months custodial sentence, of which 10 months conditional for one fellow suspect, and a sentence of 24 months for the other suspect, of which 6 months conditional. The wives of the two fellow suspect also faced charges for whitewashing. The Prosecution demanded the maximum community hours of 240 hours against them with a conditional prison sentence of 6 months.
Source: OM