St. Maarten – Former Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte, former Finance Minister George Jamaloodin and United People’s party leader Theo Heyliger had a meeting at the UP-party headquarters on September 16 or 17, 2010. Present at that meeting was also Lawrence Pietersz, at the time the head of the department of internal and external security of the national security service of Curacao (VDC).
This appears from confidential documents, the Dutch parliamentarian Ronald van Raak (Socialist Party) published this week on the Dutch website thepostonline.nl.
That Schotte was in St. Maarten at the time, or that he met with Heyliger is no secret. The timing is just before the September 19, 2010 elections and Schotte even addressed the UP-crowd on the ring road during the party’s last public meeting before those elections.
Pietersz however got into hot water for his trip to St. Maarten with the VDC. The ticket for his flight to St. Maarten was a gift, it appears from the documents and Pietersz asked on September 15 for two days off to use it. However, the next day he left for St. Maarten without permission.
Minister of Justice Magali Jacoba barred Pietersz from entering the VDC-buildings, because of this and because he had been spotted in the company of Schotte, Jamaloodin and Heyliger. “Through your actions you have broken the rules and put the independence of the VDC at risk,” Jacoba wrote in a letter dated September 20, 2010.
Schotte did not take this decision lying down. Though he took his time, on December 30, 2010 – when he had in the meantime become Curacao’s first Prime Minister – he wrote to VDC-director Edsel Gumbs that the Council of Ministers had reinstated Pietersz.
Gumbs however, refused to let Pietersz back to work. He got support from the VDC’s supervisory board. In a letter dated February 21, 2011, Mr. H.E. de Boer wrote that the order to let Pietersz back to work “violates the objectives of the VDC.”
Considering that the VDC had filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office against Pietersz for violating his oath of secrecy, the supervisory board considered letting him back to work in his current function “would seriously damage the functioning of the department.”
The complaint against Pietersz filed by acting VDC-director Rudy St. Jago charges him with leaking information to George Jamaloodin. This information was about screening results and about arrested citizens. Pietersz also had contact with Jamaloodin about renting Safety Zone for the VDC – a building that belongs to Jamaloodin.
Phone data furthermore showed that Pietersz demanded money from Jamaloodin and that the latter was prepared to give him even more than he asked for.
Schotte and Jamaloodin met Heyliger in September 2010
