Pieter Omtzigt

Pieter Omtzigt   (Politician, author, economist)
Born	8 January 1974 The Hague, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Exeter, European University Institute
Interests	• Malta • Corruption • Fraud • Mark Rutte
Party	Christian Democratic Appeal
Dutch MP. Shadowed by the Turkish Deep State for investigating accused peadophile and justice Secretary-General Joris Demmink. Shadowed by the Maltese Deep State for investigating the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Pressured by Ernst Hirsch Ballin and Piet Hein Donner to leave Joris Demmink alone. Silenced from the investigation about Demmink personally by Mark Rutte and his own party and the Childcare Benefits Affair.  Netherlands/Member of the House of Representatives In office 2003 - Present

Pieter Omtzigt is a Dutch politician for the Christian Democratic Appeal or CDA party since 2003, being the parliamentary leader as party leader Wopke Hoekstra is Dutch Minister of Finance. During the 2010s Omzigt became a vocal opponent of Mark Rutte which his party is in a coalition with since 2017, being the target of a conspiracy to remove him in 2021 and irregularities in the CDA party election he lost very narrowly. Omzigt was also silenced regarding calling for investigating accused pedophile, Secretary-General of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security Joris Demmink.

Early Career

Omzigt studied economics and statistics at the University of Exeter from 1992 to 1996. In 2002, Omzigt became a doctoral researcher for the department of quantitative economics at the University of Amsterdam. Omzigt promoted in econometrics at the European University Institute in Florence in 2003. In 2003, Omzigt was moved up the ranks as Jan Peter Balkenende was chosen to lead a new coalition as PM, and became a representative for the Christian Democratic Appeal party.

Parliament

First term

Omzigt quickly became quite a vocal and staunch defender of human rights. Omzigt noticeably became a defender of pensions for the elderly and was a vocal opponent of the idea of deep politicians in Europe to couple social security to child benefits as the wave of new immigrants would gladly try to use them, so that economies wouldn't collapse as a result of the aging workforce.

“The French have been utilizing population policies for centuries. And they still think that they lost the Franco-Prussian War because they didn't have enough soldiers to send to the front lines. And that's why I don't want to implement any form of populace policy.”
Pieter Omtzigt (27 November 2004) 

During Omzigt's first term, he became a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the West-European Union and Vice-president of the monitoring committee for human rights of Christians in the middle-east. In the Council of Europe, he pressured and succeeded in brokering a new agreement that made it mandatory for banks to share information to foreign countries to combat money laundering, following his reports on Switzerland and Luxembourg (this late one caused quite a stir as half of Dutch TV is de facto located there for tax purposes).

Second term

Omzigt was again not directly elected but chosen as a replacement of the new coalition members of the first Mark Rutte coalition. Notable actions include requesting international police laws for registered paedophile clubs, pressured Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to pressure Turkey to stop confiscating and bulldozing monasteries and more.

President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and Eurocomissioner Michel Barnier would later clash with Omzigt about his refusal to mess with people's pensions, as Van Rompuy opted since the 2000s to force EU-countries to alter the pensions of their citizens.

Fourth Term

MH-17

Omzigt resigned from being a spokesperson for his party regarding the Malaysia Airlines 17 dossier after an incident allowing a false Ukrainian witness to speak in a meeting. Omzigt was suspected to be one of the few coalition members to have doubts in the official narrative regarding MH 17.

Demmink

Full article: Joris Demmink

In 2012, Omzigt shocked congress by reporting media sources and their claims about Secretary-General Joris Demmink of the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Demmink was accused of raping at least 2 boys, aged 12 and 14, in 2007 by a Turkish national jailed for life in 2002 for murder and drug dealing. The case was picked up by his lawyer Adèle van der Plas, on behalf of one of the boys in 2010. The other refused to press charges. An initial investigation by the public prosecution department failed to turn up any evidence and in 2015, the appeal court ordered a formal criminal investigation. Turkey refused to cooperate with the investigation but a Turkish document purporting to show he was in Turkey is a fake, the investigators say. Demmink has been investigated by a few MPs that have all disappeared from parliament, and most of his investigations against him have been stonewalled (even after US congress members warned about him), halted, leaked to him, or pressured (once via his minister Winnie Sorgdrager).

In 2013, after repetitious questions on how Demmink was not under arrest if not prosecuted Omzigt remarked he was pressured by former Ministers of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin and Piet Hein Donner to "shut up" about Demmink. Omzigt also told a Dutch political internet site he was "being shadowed" by the Turkish secret service. Omzigt his remarks were placed on a Dutch activist site called the "Demminkconspiracy" after which he contacted and requested the site to remove his accusations against Donner and Hirsch Ballin (the latter of whom also ran away during a Q&A at a Dutch college when they asked questions about Demmink, was pressured by a vote in parliament asking for a response from Demmink's ministry and a letter from a former associate of Demmink in NRC Handelsblad).

Particularly the passage about an e-mail Omzigt received about a former Dutch warden who was a contact of an assistant of Demmink reporting "to be very concerned about the dates I had to arrange with boys, who were minors, mostly from Thailand from before and around 1993" caused a media stir.

After engaging with Frans Timmermans and Dutch ambassador Rudolf Bekink on Twitter which caused Dutch public to highlight the fact they're still defending a civil servant accused of pedophilia for over 30 years in multiple countries, Omzigt suddenly stopped reporting about the case around 2015. Two radio hosts wrote a journalist in 2020 that Omzigt told them the following story after a program, which was kept very under-reported in commercial media;

“I've stopped with that case after Syrband Buma stormed into my office. Because he had been given an instruction from the president Mark Rutte that I had to stop with the questions in parliament about Joris Demmink.”
Pieter Omzigt (10 October 2020) 

Fifth Term

Omzigt was the only member of this party to be elected with preferential votes in 2012, as his position chosen by the party-chairpersons - again - wasn't close to the expected seats his party would get in the elections, as they chose to remove him initially from the party list, seemingly a weird choice for the man in so many EU-commissions.

Notable activities during his term included an investigation of whether and which Dutch nationals are still receiving pensions for serving for the German military apparatus (the answer is 27), starting a movement to stop the Ankara Agreement, in particular, the section that allows Turkish nationals to keep their Turkish passport and not having to obtain a Dutch passport. This wish was granted in 2020. Omzigt became the assigned reporter for Daphne Caruana Galizia, where he developed an interest in Malta, calling it a deeply corrupt and dangerous country with their assassinations, money laundering, and golden passports. Omzigt enjoyed round-the-clock security in Malta following his publication on the hitman connected to Maltese politicians.

During the end of his term, Omzigt became a vital investigator for the Dutch Child Benefits Affair, which led to the fall of the third coalition of Mark Rutte in 2021. Omzigt became noted for uncovering Mark Rutte's "leadership style", which had its own name in texts between civil servants and Rutte, where need-to-know, plausible deniability, and plan cover-ups had become rampant.

“There's a wider agenda underneath this. I wish it was only one tax officer, it was that one or that one, or that minister. That's why I've said for over 4 years, I don't care if you resign. Why? It isn't one person, we created a system and government that doesn't put the people in the first place, only during election campaigns.".”
Pieter Omtzigt (19 January 2021) 

In a continuation of Rutte's early policies, Rutte's third cabinet fell in 2021 over the conclusions of the parliamentary inquiry over the social benefits policies set out by Rutte in the early 2010s. Rutte after being convicted of violating the constitution reimplemented his policies at the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, which included "targeting" citizens of the basis of race and background accusing them wrongly of fraud, fining them for thousands of Euros without any investigation with up to 26.000 parents involved. When the parliamentary inquiry concluded Mark Rutte's three cabinets had violated "institutional rights" of citizens, the day after resigning, the Dutch parliament received a report back that simply stated multiple times "for an answer on question 4, see question 8" at which question 8 pointed back to question 3. Following the benefits scandal, Rutte was personally charged by 80 parents for 3 acts of prosecutorial malfeasance. Omtzigt called all branches of government corrupt including the media, linking them to an intimate gang, sketching an Operation Mockingbird-like society, noticing "whenever I ask a question in this coalition, I become the problem".

Omzigt noted other cover-ups in the affair, including the civil servant who turned whistleblower being fired and the General Data Protection Regulation being used by the government to request data about tenants, share them with every private entity they deemed could get some tax benefits back to them, and after 20000 of families were already or on the brink of being declared bankrupt, Mark Rutte and his secretaries at the ministry personally visited the Tax and Customs administrations, pressuring for maintaining the same ruthless line, while trying to form a plan how to keep the government for resigning in June 2019, one year before the parliamentary inquiry. Something Rutte failed to explain in parliament.

“Long I've objected comparing Malta and the Netherlands. But here something else is not functioning. That is power and opposing power. There is such an intimate connection between the coalition and parliament, between the parliament and the media, between the parliament and the justice system. If you ask difficult questions, you become the problem. There is something wrong with the checks and balances. And it goes further. The criminal justice system doesn't work anymore. All the NGOs that hog the government's money, all don't work anymore. Know what happens nowadays? They don't dare to speak, because the government will kill their subsidy. We've organized or system so precisely that that our flock of politicians values the party-chairman more than the electorate.”
Pieter Omtzigt (19 January 2021) 

Wopke Hoekstra

In a leaked report to RTL (a federal crime according to multiple scholars), Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra was noted to have remarked in 2020 the weekly ministers-meeting "We tried to sensitize Mr. Omzigt, it has not proved successful". A vigorous campaign between both sides supporting Omzigt and supporting Rutte emerged in Duch public media, mostly not remarking it is mandatory by the Dutch constitutional law to control the government, not the other way around, and Hoekstra's suggested operation - trying to alter the work of a member of parliament - was also not mandatory by law.

Party Election

Omzigt, State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Mona Keijzer, Dutch Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport & Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Hugo de Jonge campaigned for the position of party leader in the upcoming election in 2021. In the final round of voting at the party congress, although Keijzer urged her voters to vote for de Jonge, Omzigt lost 49,3 to 50,7%. After the result multiple voters voiced their suspicions something in the voting process went wrong as the system processed their votes for Omzigt as a vote for de Jonge. Although Keijzer also voices her concerns, even after de Jonge stepped down a few months later due to not being able to combine to COVID-19/Pandemic with the job, Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra was elected leader instead.

2021 Election

Following the 2021 Dutch General election, one of the chosen scouts to form a new coalition, second Dutch Deputy Prime Minister & Dutch Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Kajsa Ollongren was photographed in The Hague after the press received a notice she was tested positive with Covid-19. Ollongren was discovered to hold all the briefing notes from her and the second scout Annemarie Jorritsma their meetings with all elected parties in the new Dutch House of Representatives in her arm, without a book cover facing the press.

The notes included many never-before-seen passages, including a sentence literally translated to "Position Omzigt, function elsewhere", implying if the CDA party was to be part of a new coalition, Omzigt was to be disposed of elsewhere, perhaps outside The Hague. Ollogren, Rutte, Hoekstra, Jorritma denied having talked about Omzigt personally or ordered to note him in the documents for the scouts, as it would imply the coalition trying to eliminate critical MPs of other parties behind their back.

Just before the debate between 17 political parties in Dutch parliament, requesting who named Omzigt, the secret documents requested by the civil servants who hand wrote it, revealed Mark Rutte himself remarked "You have to do something with Omzigt", mentioning him a further 17 times. Rutte escaped a vote of no-confidence by 3 votes after a debate of 11 hours, where the source who had informed Rutte the morning before was also not revealed, while he remarked having no "active memory" of any talks mentioning Omzigt.

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