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Dutch white-collar sentencing in accounting fraud show continental contrast

By Douglas A. Berman

In China, corrupt executives can get the death penalty, and decades of prison time were handed out to CEOs convicted of fruad like Bernie Ebbers and Jeff Skilling.  But, as this Reuters story indicates, sentencing outcomes are much different on the continent: The Amsterdam appeals court sentenced three former executives of Dutch supermarket group Ahold on Wednesday to suspended sentences and fines over an accountancy fraud revealed by the company in 2003. In the Netherlands' biggest ever corporate accountancy fraud, Ahold had revealed massive bookkeeping irregularities at its U.S. Foodservice business and other foreign subsidiaries, overstating profits by almost 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion). Former Chief Executive Cees van der Hoeven was sentenced by an Amsterdam appeals court to pay a fine of 30,000 euros, while former Chief Financial Officer Michiel Meurs was given 240 hours of community labour, a fine of 100,000 euros and a six-month suspended sentence...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 29, 2009 (boomark / email).