In February of 2019, a judge sentenced former minister Paul Croes to four years in prison. This was subtracting the 80 days that he had already served while in preventative detention, and stipulating that he could no longer participate in any parliamentarian elections or work for the government for 9 years. 2 years after this sentencing, in January of 2021, the processing will finally commence in an Aruban court, during which three judges will come from the Dutch Caribbean to tend to the case while the lawyer Pepi Sulvaran from Curacao and Demis Illes from Aruba defend the former politician.
One of the accusations against former Minister of Labor Paul Croes in the IBIS case is that he improperly used money from his Leadership & Excellence foundation, which is his campaign foundation, between 2014 and 2017. In other words, that he spent the funds for personal use. The sum that the Public Ministry accuses him of using is 55.000 florin in four years, which would mean 13.750 florins per year and roughly 1.145 florins per month.
The IBIS case commenced, as PG van Dam catalogs, as a “large-scale and extensive corruption case”. MEP parliamentarians considered it to be the corruption case of the century spoke of the 10 thousand florins and detained Paul Croes for 80 days in complete isolation, without any communication with the outside world. How will a persecutor justify this in the Superior Court, is the main question? How will the Public Ministry explain that because Paul Croes got a small discount during his air-conditioned installation, he will now have to spend 5 years in prison?
As the lawyers state, the IBIS case definitely does not have the ground to stand on, like the Public Ministry has presented it to the public. PG van Dam, from the start, has referred to the former minister as the “Big Fish”, inasmuch to say that Paul Croes is to blame for a large-scale money laundering scheme, fraud, and corruption. Now the persecutor is stating that Paul Croes used money from his own foundation in the wrong manner. On the 30th of August, the case will be discussed in the Superior Court, and from there, the lawyers will show the three judges that the affairs are not what they have been made out to be by the persecutor.
*Picture: propaganda for Paul Croes’ 2013 campaign, the last parliamentarian election that he participated in. Then he managed to receive 1898 votes on his name. the previous election in 2009, garnered him 1578 individual votes*
A team of lawyers from Aruba and Curacao will battle it out in court to try and convince the magistrates that Paul Croes collected funds for his foundation himself and that he also paid his foundation’s costs. So he paid certain costs forward, such as payment for the shirts, campaign articles, food, and drinks for his campaign team, and then charged the foundation back for those costs. This is one of the more serious accusations made against the former minister.
It is also known that the former minister approached companies asking for donations to his foundation during his campaign time. Paul Croes’ defense team states that the accusations made against Paul Croes are not logical. Why would Paul Croes ask foundations to support his foundation if he was planning on “stealing” from it later? His lawyers insist that this accusation does not make sense, and therefore has no ground to stand on, and is, instead, a lie that was fabricated in order to present the case in the first place. It appears that they do not understand how the local political system functions, nor the inner workings of a political foundation, according to the defense.
This case will reach the Superior Court at the end of this month, where three judges will decide their verdict on the accusations made against Paul Croes stating that he used 55.000 florins from his own foundation in an incorrect manner. For this accusation, Paul Croes was incarcerated for 86 days in isolation without any contact with the outside world or his family.
