International

With the bringing to light of yet another major instance of fraud, concerning the investment fund CIG Biodiesel, the SP has had enough. 'The Netherlands must regain the ability to control of its own financial sector,' says Dennis de Jong, number one candidate on the party's list for the coming European elections. 'Finance Minister Wouter Bos says repeatedly that he can't intervene with Brussels. But when is it going to dawn on him that there's something wrong with Brussels' rules?”

CIG Biodiesel

The magazine Quote this month published revelations regarding the CIG Biodiesel affair. The firm, which attracts environmentally-minded investors, has been called 'the green cheats'. The investment fund used a device which enabled it to evade supervision by the Dutch Financial Market Authority (AFM), a matter which has provoked SP parliamentary questions in the recent past. The fund was sliced into tranches of less than  € 2.5 million each. Below this threshold, rules imposed by Brussels forbid the AFM from exercising oversight.

Intervention
 
The CIG Biodiesel affair forms part of a long sequence of fraud involving, amongst others,  Palm Invest, Royal Dubai, Golden Sun Resorts and Easy Life. “In answer to previous questions from the SP, Labour Party Finance Minister Wouter Bos has repeated the mantra 'Europe' as his reason why he cannot intervene," says De Jong. “I find that incomprehensible. I'm not prepared to accept it. Under pressure from Brussels, supervision of financial institutions is being systematically reduced. Brussels still believes that the financial sector can regulate itself, but what always happens is that people simply line their own pockets. The problem of the failure of Brussels and of the banks cannot be solved by more of the same. What we therefore want to see is the Netherlands regaining the power to intervene whenever that may prove necessary. And not when it's too late, when people have lost their money and the bird has flown."