The Netherlands has become heavily dependent on Kazakh oil since Russian oil was sanctioned and Dutch companies are making big profits in the Kazakh oil industry, which is entwined with corruption and repression, the NRC reported on Wednesday.

The paper says it “interviewed politicians, scientists, diplomats, activists, doctors, lawyers and representatives of the oil industry in the Netherlands, the US and Kazakhstan, visited oil fields and social projects of oil companies and, along with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), dug through thousands of documents, including controversial contracts between Kazakh and Dutch companies.”

All of this, the paper said, shows that the Netherlands’ relationship with the Kazakh oil industry is toxic and shaky. The Netherlands, it points out, earns well in Kazakhstan and the country is Kazakhstan’s “number one foreign investor”, as president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Mark Rutte last May.

“But just as Nigeria has been damaged by oil extraction,’ the paper said, “so too Kazakh oil is surrounded by disease, environmental damage, repression and corruption.”

Read the full article, in English.