Three arrested for fraud involving Groningen gas grants

Two men and one woman from Groningen have been arrested for fraud involving money that should have been spent on repairing damage caused to property by earthquakes in the region.

In total, the three are said to have made 50 fraudulent applications for grants, totalling €350,000. Of that €200,000 has already been received.

Three homes in the province were searched by police who took away paperwork, computers and telephones, tax officials said. The homes and bank accounts of the three suspects were also sequestered.

The investigation began after an alert from two government agencies set up to facilitate the payment of funding to repair earthquake damage.

“The two men submitted applications for several houses and the 27-year-old suspect’s construction company was said to have done the repair work for the homes,” RTV Noord quoted official documents as saying.

“However, investigations revealed that the damage had not been repaired and the invoices submitted were falsified. In addition, the pair had claimed additional money for several other properties they owned using false documents.”

All three are being held in custody while the investigation continues.

Since the Slochteren gas field was opened in 1963 the Dutch state has earned €360 billion from gas extraction, with another €66 billion split between energy giants Shell and ExxonMobil.

But the cost to the community was high: more than 1,600 earthquakes have hit the region since the 1980s, damaging 85,000 buildings. The turning point was a quake measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale in the village of Huizinge in 2012.