Thursday, February 21, 2008

Belated Revelation: Father of Current Queen Involved in Another Corruption Scandal


In the 1970s it became known that Prince Bernhard, the husband of the then-Queen Juliana and father of the current Queen Beatrix, had been involved in a corruption affair in which the American firm Lockheed had paid him bribes in order to promote the sale of its planes to the Dutch army. Dutch journalist Anet Bleich, in her doctoral thesis, has now revealed that Joop den Uyl (Labor), Dutch Prime Minister at the time, had concealed information that the prince had received bribes from Northrop as well, until 1973. At the time den Uyl managed to prevent criminal prosecution of the prince in the Lockheed affair. Had the issue of the Northrop bribe also been known, however, it is unlikely that this would have been possible, and it might have caused the end of the reign of the House of Orange in the Netherlands. www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article506208.ece/Premier_Den_Uyl_redde_troon_Beatrix

1 comment:

Michael said...

This is such bad news. Imagine, 30 years ago, there was a minor scandal. Hold the front page!!

Elsewhere, normality reigns.