UU chair was warned about fraud

In March of this year, it was announced that Utrecht Holdings had filed a police report against three (former) employees for fraud and bribery. At that time, the partnership with which UMC Utrecht and UU’s scientific research commercialize refused to provide further information.

Only after former Holding director Gom van Strien was asked by PVV leader Geert Wilders to explore new government coalition options, it became clear that Van Strien is one of the suspects. This could be deduced from public court documents. Van Strien decided to withdraw from his cabinet forming endeavors after several national media had published about the case.

By coincidence
The subdistrict court’s judgment also showed that Van Strien’s successor, Oscar S., and a former in-house lawyer of Utrecht Holdings are the other defendants. In 2006, Van Strien and S. are said to have jointly ensured that shares in the company Nodens BV, which included two biomedical companies, were acquired by the company Hereswint BV for a price that was too low. Van Strien and S.’s wives each held 32 percent of the shares in that company, but the men did not notify anyone of this fact.

Utrecht Holdings said in an article in the Volkskrant this weekend that the abuse was discovered by accident when S. had left Utrecht Holdings in June 2021 and Nodens and Hereswint announced a merger, for which S.’s wife had to sign. Employees of the Holdings found this suspicious.

It was decided to have research firm Deloitte find out what was going on. That investigation revealed a number of other cases in which S. appears to play a dubious role. S. was summarily dismissed in May of this year.

Whistleblower 
However, the same Volkskrant article also shows that (former) employees had been suspicious of director S. for a long time. One of them would have wanted to talk about this with the then supervisory directors of Utrecht Holding at the beginning of 2017. But requests for appointments with commissioner Anton Pijpers, then vice-president of the UU board, and with commissioner Frank Miedema, then vice-president of UMC Utrecht, were apparently refused.

When it emerged in the spring of 2018 that S. was investing in the biotech company Gendx in a personal capacity, distrust among employees increased. Utrecht Holdings had recently sold all its shares because they were no longer attractive.

Shortly afterwards, according to the Volkskrant, a Holdings employee made use of the university whistleblower scheme. According to him, Utrecht Holdings may have made unlawful payments to S.’s accounts, including for consultancy work. In the same month, according to the newspaper, an anonymous report was made to the Supervisory Board.

Anton Pijpers, who has since been appointed chair of the UU Executive Board, had the allegations investigated. But in the spring of 2019 he came to the conclusion that no rules had been broken, wde Volkskrant writes.

Adequate action
In a response to DUB, the university confirms that the supervisory board members of Utrecht Holdings received “a number of signals” from concerned employees before the full extent of the problems became clear. “As far as we know, adequate actions were undertaken afterward.”

The whistleblower’s report was investigated at the time by the confidential counsellor and the head of Legal Affairs, the university reports. The results were discussed with the whistleblower.

The UU says it is “shocked” by the results of the Deloitte investigation commissioned by Utrecht Holdings. That investigation revealed, among other things, that S. deliberately provided the supervisory directors with incorrect information in order to obtain their consent to the sale of the shares in Gendx for a low amount. Later, S. and the in-house lawyer acquired shares in Gendx at very favourable rates. Gendx was sold in its entirety last year for 135 million euros. A court judgment states that S. received 4.5 million euros for his shares.

Deception
In the meantime, the supervision of Utrecht Holdings has been scrutinized and a number of improvements have been made to prevent a recurrence. A new system of management reporting has also been introduced.

At the same time, the university emphasizes that the regulators were deliberately misled and bot provided with all of the information. The university refers to court rulings that confirm this. ”In those circumstances it is difficult to operate, even with a well-functioning governing board.”

Utrecht Holdings wants to recover the financial damage in civil proceedings. It is unclear how extensive the damage is. The possibility of the opening of a criminal case is unknown: the complaint is still pending with the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Both Gom van Strien and Oscar S. say in the Volkskrant that the cases have been misrepresented by Utrecht Holdings. They claim they are innocent.