WILLEMSTAD – Roderick van Kwartel (59) will retain his sentence and serve three years in prison for passive bribery.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the complaints against the earlier decision in the appellate court have no grounds for annulment. In July of this year, the Attorney General already concluded that the cassation appeal should be rejected.

The cassation appeal of the three other defendants, former technical manager Gilbert Gregory Cijntje, mechanical inspector Michèle Mario Kinburn, and external consultant Ashley Isidora, was also rejected. They each received a sentence of thirty months in the appellate court, and this will remain in effect.

Van Kwartel was the former director of Refineria di Kòrsou (RdK) and was appointed to find a strategic partner to operate the refinery and Bullenbaai. He accepted millions in bribes during the official bidding process.

They sought to receive $750,000 for the contract and then a monthly fee of $20,000. Additionally, ten cents per crude oil barrel was to be paid, which amounts to approximately $5,000,000 annually.

At the Supreme Court, Van Kwartel, Cijntje, and Kinburn had complained that they were unable to exercise their right to choose their own attorney. They wanted assistance from criminal law specialist Mark Dunbergen from Breda (the Netherlands), mainly because they have become well-known figures in Curaçao due to the publicity surrounding this case.

However, the judges of the Supreme Court were unanimous in their decision, in line with the Attorney General, that the appellate court had sufficiently justified that the rights of the three had not been violated in terms of a fair trial.

Bron: Curacao Chronicle