Hans van de Ven

Hans van de Ven (soldier, spook, whistleblower)
Born	1953 Netherlands
Died	2021 (Age 68) Amstelveen, Netherlands
Residence	Amstelveen,  Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Exposed	Maximator-Alliance
Victim of	Premature death
Interests	• MiVD • SIGINT
Former SIGINT head of the Dutch MiVD intelligence agency in 1990s. Suspicious death ruled "natural death". House was burglarized shortly after, female found in house sought for fraud let loose. Police reopened case in 2022.  Head SIGINT Division In office 1990 - 2001 Employer MIVD

Hans van de Ven was a former Dutch spook working for the military intelligence service MiVD. Van de Ven was the Chief SIGINT of the MiVD in the 1990s. Van de Ven was found death in his home in 2021 in the presence of a known criminal, ruled a natural death. In 2022, the Dutch police reopened his case, suspecting foul play.

Career

Van de Ven studied electronics and acoustics. He did additional training in eavesdropping techniques. His specialism became traffic and signal analysis in communication networks. Van de Ven joined the MIVD in 1986.

From the 90s until around 9/11, Van de Ven was head of signal analysis at the MIVD's SIGINT division. He left after a conflict and was subsequently unable to obtain freelance work abroad from sister services and specialist telecom companies. According to newspaper AD, he was nearly bankrupt.

Operation Gladio

Full article: Operation Gladio/B

Full article: Hüseyin Baybaşin

After 9-11, Van de Ven became increasingly critical of the Intelligence agencies their mass surveillance. A profile on a Dutch crime site suggests a few reasons as to why. In the investigation on the surveillance of Huseyin Baybasin, Van de Ven claimed that phone calls of Baybasin reported as evidence had been manipulated. Although he was an expert in the case, his reputation was damaged by advocate-general Diederik Aben, who rejected his conclusions and labelled him incompetent. The Supreme Court eventually rejected the review request, leaving questions about the manipulated wiretaps unanswered.

Baybasin was subsequently jailed in the Netherlands for drug trafficking charges, in which he suggested was only made possible by controversial judge Joris Demmink. Demmink was suspected by ISGP to be blackmailed in a VIPedophile operation. Baybasin argued he was backed in a government sponsored off-the-books drug trafficking scheme, with multiple Turkish ministers involved. Van de Ven's investigation was argued by the Dutch Crimesite as evidence, Baybasin was to be jailed at all costs, for strange reasons.

The case highlighted the ongoing secrecy and problems surrounding the wiretap system in the Netherlands, with the National Police keeping a report on wiretaps secret despite court orders to make it public, giving Van de Ven an even more stringent reputation of being a "traitor". Former FBI translator and whislteblower Sibel Edmonds mentioned the case, and suggested it to be part of Operation Gladio.

Banned worldwide and assassination attempt

Van de Ven was reported to have received the threats from colleagues in the Baybasin probe including one where they promised to "make the rest of his life miserable". Van de Ven received a "informal ban" from the intelligence community and reported he was burned internationally by "forces" to make sure all his applications on 4 continents all "cut all contact after two weeks". Starting in 2002, threats became actions. In 2002, a break-in at his house in Amstelveen occurred. Parts of files on cases he was involved in as a consultant had been stolen. In 2004, an observation team was working on him, taking pictures during trips to the supermarket. He picked up the phone and was told they were 'Dutch guys' that were arrested and expelled directly after this incident. In 2005, Van de Ven was the subject of a police style "PIT-maneuver" in a highway tunnel in the centre of Amsterdam. Van de Ven escaped after spotting the car prematurely, and tried tracing the car that hit him. The car escaped, its license plate belonged according to old friends in the MIVD to MIVD officers.

Maximator

eter F. Müller, investigative journalist; Paul Reuvers and Marcus Simons, Cryptomuseum Eindhoven; Markus Kompa, writer. Peter F. Müller revealed in February a delicate collaboration between BND and CIA for harvesting SIGINT via backdoors. It turned out that this was just the tip of an iceberg. While researching a documentary about the German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Peter F. Müller came across a top secret document (MINERVA) about a delicate collaboration between BND and CIA. Since 1970 the spy agencies secretly owned and controlled the Swiss based Crypto AG, the world market leader for encrypting devices. They were selling rigged crypto-machines to more then 100 countries in the world and CIA and BND were thus able to intercept and decrypt the diplomatic and military communications from those countries. Peter F. Müller put together an international team of investigative journalists to find out more about this intelligence operation, including Paul Reuvers from the Cryptomuseum in Eindhoven as technical adviser. While the BND is often portrayed as a looser, operation RUBIKON as it was called by the BND was a success story for over half a century. Security expert Prof. Richard J. Aldrich rates the project “as probably the most important intelligence operation in history.” To protect the method the governments of USA and Germany had to pretend blindness even when they learned about war crimes. The revelation in February which was nicknamed #CRYPTOLEAKS raised a political scandal in Switzerland. The story continued when Peter F. Müller revealed a parallel running secret sharing alliance for intercepted information between five European states called operation MAXIMATOR. There is more to come.

In 2020 Van de Ven exposed the Maximator-Alliance, a secret alliance for cooperation in the fields of signals intelligence and crypto analysis, cracking telephones, intercepting communication and implementing spyware with multiple European countries & Israel. After the leak, it was reported by The Economist, The Register and the Dutch NPO.

Being named "the number one suspect of the MIVD regarding leaking classified files", Dutch newspaper AD mentioned that there were "sources confirming people were not happy with Van de Ven's leaks".

Death

Van de Ven was found dead in his bath-tub in 2021 in a suburb of Amsterdam. Although a former female tax specialist being sought for fraud named Annique Botermans tipped off and guided the police to his body, it was named a "natural death". Botermans and Van de Ven had set up companies in cancer prevention and lab research. Van de Ven's owned those companies because Botermans was sought for a million dollar scam setting up non-existent banks in San Marino. Botermans already was suspected in the murder of a former business partner in 2017. Botermans was found to had written a note on the day of his death reading "the black day of Hans" in her agenda. The police opened a murder investigation into his death.

Investigation

The Dutch national police and the MIVD refused to answer questions why the original police investigation was called off and why there was no police report made up regarding a burglary into his home after his death, only confirming the family, friends, investigate journalists from the AD kept not accepting the natural death reasoning. Botermans refused to comment regarding the reopened case, and repeated her claim Van de Ven died in an instant.

Documents missing

In 2023 the police was revealed to have ruled the death a "natural" one. This was after the police was admitting to have deleted all pictures (another case of missing documents) of Van de Ven's body at the scene - because of the immediate "natural cause" ruling - even though the secret service MIVD had already joined the investigation, prompting a change in national procedure for police investigations. Private investigators were only told of this by a member of the investigating team that requested to remain anonymous.

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