Cees van der Hoeven

Cees van der Hoeven   (businessman)
Born	9 September 1947 The Hague, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Groningen
Criminal charge	fraud,forgery
Spouse	Annita Belinda van Der Klooster
Criminal convictions	not exposing fraud
Dutch businessman who attended Bilderberg/1998 and Bilderberg/2001

Cornelis Harry (Cees) van der Hoeven is a former Dutch executive. He is best known as the former chairman of the Board of the multinational retail company Ahold.

Education

Van der Hoeven started studying business economics at the age of sixteen at the University of Groningen. He graduated cum laude five years later.

Career

After his studies he started a successful career at Shell, where he worked in London, Curacao, USA and Oman. In 1985, Van der Hoeven joined the Board of Directors at Ahold, as the finance man.

In 1993, he became chairman of the Board of Ahold in succession to Pierre Jean Everaert. Initially, he was very successful. For example, he was named Dutch top executive of the year five times in a row. Under his leadership, Ahold made more than 50 acquisitions and Ahold's share was a favorite on the stock exchange. In 2003, Ahold operated in 35 countries, had sales of Euro 73 billion and a workforce of 420,000 employees.

Accounting scandal

In 2002, a turnaround came unexpectedly: Ahold had to issue a profit warning. In February 2003, an accounting scandal at Ahold subsidiary US Foodservice came to light. Through supplier fraud, in collusion with employees, it was found that Ahold had overstated U.S. Foodservice's operating profit on paper by more than $500 million in 2001 and 2002. After this fraud and controversy came to light, Ahold's stock price collapsed. Investors and investors made a lot of losses, having previously made large profits.

Criminal Procedure

As a result of the fraud, Cees van der Hoeven and his financial right-hand man Michiel Meurs had to resign. Van der Hoeven and Meurs were subsequently prosecuted by the public prosecutor's office on suspicion of fraud and forgery. In addition, there was a controversy over the use of sideletters that were supposed to show that Ahold could exercise full control over its daughter enterprises. Former Ahold board member Jan Andreae and former Ahold Commissioner Roland Fahlin were also suspected. In 2004, Van Der Hoeven and his co-defendants had to appear before the court in Amsterdam.

The trial of Van der Hoeven and the three co-defendants began on 6 March 2006. On 22 May 2006, van der Hoeven was sentenced to 9 months' probation and a fine of 225,000 euros. Van Der Hoeven announced that he would appeal.

On 2 June 2008, The Court of Appeal of the criminal case against Van Der Hoeven and other persons involved began to hear the appeal. On January 28, 2009, the court in Amsterdam sentenced Van Der Hoeven to a fine of €30,000,-- because, when he discovered the existence of the sideletters, he did not report this directly to the external auditor. He was acquitted of any involvement in the aforementioned fraud. Meurs was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of 6 months, a 240-hour work sentence and a € 100,000 fine. Andreae was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of 3 months and a fine of € 50,000. Fahlin was acquitted.

Personal Life

Cees van der Hoeven has been married to Annita Belinda van Der Klooster, former presenter of RTL 4's Trendies Beauty program, since 1998.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1998	14 May 1998	17 May 1998	Scotland Turnberry	The 46th Bilderberg meeting, held in Scotland, chaired by Peter Carrington
Bilderberg/2001	24 May 2001	27 May 2001	Sweden Stenungsund	The 49th Bilderberg, in Sweden. Reported on the WWW.

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