On Wednesday, an Amsterdam appeals court sentenced three former executives of Dutch supermarket group Ahold to suspended sentences and fines for financial fraud revealed by the company in 2003. The Ahold fraud is the Netherlands’ biggest corporate accountancy fraud ever, NRC reports, involving the overstatement of profits by almost 1 billion euros.According to NRC, the court ruled as follows for the three former Ahold executives:
- former CEO Cees van der Hoeven: sentenced to pay a fine of 30,000 euros;
- former CFO Michiel Meurs: sentenced to 240 hours of community labour, a fine of 100,000 euros and a six-month suspended sentence;
- former management board member Jan Andreae: sentenced to a three-month suspended sentence and a fine of 50,000 euros; and
- former supervisory board member Roland Fahlin: acquitted, a confirmation of the lower court’s ruling.
An Amsterdam court had reportedly previously sentenced Van der Hoeven and Meurs to suspended jail terms of nine months and fines of 225,000 euros, while Andreae had been given a four-month suspended sentence and a fine of 120,000 euros. Each of them appealed against that ruling, as did the public prosecutor.
