Has Limburg learned nothing from all the corruption scandals of the past 20 years? Yesterday's Justice Department-initiated arrest of Limburg officials and road construction workers suggests that the construction fraud virus is still rampant in this province.Is the party starting again? Attorney Theo Hiddema's reaction to the arrest of Limburg civil servants and road construction workers on suspicion of involvement in a potentially unprecedented corruption scandal speaks volumes. Hiddema regularly acted as counsel in major construction fraud cases. In 1989, for example, he defended Sittard contractor Lou Schreurs, who was accused of making illegal price-fixing agreements, and in 1994 provincial official Wil en Vlijmen for taking thousands of guilders in bribes from construction companies. That these cases first surfaced in Limburg in the early 1990s came as little surprise. But the uncontrollable urge to accept bribes and make price agreements turned out to be not only a purely Limburg "virus. The construction fraud inquiry in 2002 showed that the corruption cases from South Limburg were only the tip of the iceberg. Dozens of construction fraud cases came to light over the years. The most remarkable conclusion was mainly that the government itself had been asleep. Supervision of the construction industry fell short. New agreements on tenders and rules of conduct for civil servants had to put an end to corrupt behavior in the construction world and at municipalities. Behavior that manifested itself so pontifically in Limburg for the first time in the late 1980s. It was August 16, 1989, when contractor Lou Schreuers of Sittard declared to the examining magistrate in Maastricht that "in the construction world everyone pays or receives bribes." Set-up fees were the amounts that Schreurs and fellow construction companies secretly agreed to raise bids. The lowest bidder, who won the contract, later divided that set-up money among the other bidders. Schreurs was the only one convicted. For the first time, the Netherlands was introduced to what had already been called "an ingrained practice in the construction world" during a court case in 1990. Before 1987, road builders and contractors were already meeting across the country to fix prices before a tender round.
The Limburg road construction industry in particular appeared to be suffering from a chronic virus of corruption. Construction companies venomously admitted illegal price-fixing, but swore that this practice was definitely a thing of the past in the early 1990s. "Construction fraud? We don't do that anymore," the director of Laudy construction companies in Sittard, for example, declared to the police. A collective lie of the construction world, it later turned out. Supported by municipal and provincial officials who could not say no to bribes in the form of vacation trips, new cars or dinners. The accounts of a contractor in Rijswijk showed that at least fifteen construction projects in Limburg up to 2002 involved illegal work agreements. The Jongen Group from Landgraaf stood out in this regard. The works included the Atrium Hospital and Zuyd University College in Heerlen. In the mid-1990s, a series of construction affair cases already made it clear that the ties between civil servants and the construction world were very close. Mayor Wiel Vossen of Gulpen was convicted of accepting bribes from the construction world. In Maastricht, the municipality offered protection to a group of contractors and road builders by not inviting the competition to a tender. A percentage of the contract sum was given to the aldermen themselves.
In 1996, a journalist from this newspaper had to tell Mayor Constand Nuytens of Valkenburg that the tender for a road project in his municipality had been rigged. Even beforehand, the five tendering road builders had agreed that contractor Baars from Landgraaf would be the cheapest with 130,000 guilders. Although Baars, who died last year, was acquitted of forgery, he was found guilty in 1997 of participating in the cartel of road builders that divided up the work in Maastricht for fifteen years. In the years that followed, things seemed to quiet down, but names of Limburg construction companies regularly resurfaced in possible corruption scandals. The collective lie persisted. As one person involved in the new bribery affair stated to this newspaper yesterday, "Bribery in the construction world? That is something from a gray past. From the time of Baars, the last century. Now that really doesn't happen anymore, you know."
