Oscar Hammerstein

Oscar Hammerstein   (lawyer)
Hammerstein (left) with TV-presenter Art Rooijakkers at the 2016 Gay Pride Parade in Amsterdam
Born	20. February 1954)
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Leiden
Member of	LSV Minerva
Suspected by the Dutch court of money laundering by corrupt Fred Teeven. Personal lawyer of a new group formed out of old Inlichtingen en Operatiën/Klaas Bruinsma group who was also linked to a child sex ring. A personal friend of multiple accused paedophiles.

Oscar Hammerstein is a Dutch lawyer.

Life

Hammerstein was born into a family of eight children. After obtaining his diploma, on the advice of his father, he went to study law at the University of Leiden in 1975, where he graduated in civil law in 1981. During his student years he was a member of the Leiden Student Association 'Minerva', and also member and president of the associated student militia Pro Patria.

After his studies he started his career at the then law firm Blackstone, Rueb & Van Boeschoten. In 1982 he became a member and from 1985 to 1995 he was chairman of the Dutch Film Inspection. In 1989 he started a practice together with Frits Salomonson that later became part of the Boekel de Néree partnership.

On March 16, 1994, Hammerstein was arrested because Fred Teeven, then a public prosecutor in Amsterdam, suspected that his work for criminals went beyond just as a defender. It was suspected he was involved in money laundering for the criminal and drug trafficker Johan V. (better known as de Hakkelaar). Hammerstein was detained for six weeks but was eventually acquitted on all counts. However, the court ruled that he had acted carelessly in accepting the case of the Surinamese rice trader Shyam Guptar. The investigation of the Supervisory Board cleared Hammerstein of this; the Board of Trustees ruled on April 16, 1996 that "it was not established that Hammerstein should have doubted the correctness of what he had been told about the origin of the money and that acceptance and treatment cannot be called careless". During his detention he was expelled from the Boekel de Néree partnership. Hammerstein filed a complaint against the partnership with the Dutch Bar Association for allegedly having been treated improperly. Hammerstein also demanded 1.2 million guilders from the Dutch state because of the six weeks that he had been imprisoned, but the claim was rejected by the judge.

On November 24, 1994, an attack was committed on the artist Rob Scholte. As he pulled out of Laurierstraat, a hand grenade exploded beneath his dark blue BMW 525i. Scholte was seriously injured and both legs had to be amputated above the knee. One of the theories was that the attack was intended for Hammerstein, but that the perpetrator had made a mistake about the car. Hammerstein drove the same type of BMW, of the same color, and with almost the same number plate that stood nearby. The alleged change of cars has never been established and the investigation into the attack on Rob Scholte has stalled.

After 1994, Hammerstein's name was regularly in the press as a lawyer in all kinds of cases. In 2000 he started a law firm together with Gerard Spong. That year also started the case around Nina Brink of internet provider World Online (WOL). Almost immediately upon the IPO, the share price fell sharply. The prospectus disguised the fact that she had recently sold shares, and the price per share was also well below the launch price. Both the court and (on appeal) the court declared the plaintiffs inadmissible. During that period Hammerstein was also chairman of the Coornhert-Liga; an association for criminal law reform.

After the murder of Pim Fortuyn in May 2002, he indicted both journalists and politicians for cooperating in the demonization of Fortuyn. The complaint was rejected by the Court in all cases. Hammerstein and Spong wrote a book, "Persecuted them to hell", about this. He has also been active within the political party Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF), but at the end of 2003 he stepped down as LPF director together with real estate dealer Ed Maas.

In February 2011, Spong and Hammerstein fell out. It has always been unclear why. Because of this, Hammerstein and his employees started their own office on Herengracht under the name Hammerstein Advocaten N.V.

A week later it became known that Riny Schreijenberg had got the court to seize assets of Hammerstein. Schreijenberg claimed to have been owed 7 million euros for damage caused by Hammerstein, who was his lawyer in a dispute with Sony Music Entertainment in 2005, but failed to show up and failed to appeal. In an interlocutory judgment of 1 February 2012, the District Court of Amsterdam rejected Schreijenberg's claims for a portion of approximately €300,000 and instructed him to provide further information on another part of the damage claim. In a final judgment on 18 July 2012, the court rejected all of Schreijenberg's claim, and Schreijenbereg was ordered to pay the costs of €14,258.00. This judgment was rendered by P.W. van Straalen, R.H.C. van Harmelen and K.A. Brunner and pronounced in public on July 18, 2012. The final verdict has not been published.

In February 2014, Hammerstein published a book with Meulenhoff, "I have the time", in which he talks about his Leiden student days, his infection with the HIV virus and his career as a lawyer. Hammerstein claims in his book, among other things, that the then prosecutors Fred Teeven and Martin Witteveen had forged evidence in order to be able to arrest him in 1994.

In 2015 he was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Klaas Bruinsma	“Is Bruinsma's early connection with Mabel a coincidence? Maybe. But there are an awful lot of coincidences here. Mafia bosses Klaas Bruinsma, Etienne Urka and John Engelsma all seem to have had close direct or, through Oscar Hammerstein and Frits Salomonson, very close indirect ties to the Dutch royal family. Rutger Schimmelpenninck, partner in Boekel de Neree and curator of Text Lite, also has very close ties to the royal family.”	Klaas Bruinsma Joël van der Reijden ISGP	2014

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