Case 34: Royal Ahold (The Netherlands, 2003)

By the late 1990s, Royal Ahold N.V. ranked among the most prominent and respected corporations in the Netherlands. For several years, it had been named the most desirable employer and the company with the best reputation in the nation. Queen Beatrix had awarded the title “Royal” to the company, a designation reserved for Dutch companies that have operated continuously (and honourably) for 100 years. However, shortly after the turn of the century, a case of Enron-style accounting fraud rocked Ahold, and many critics insisted that the Dutch royal family rescind the company’s “Royal” designation. “This is pretty big,” said an analyst in Amsterdam. “So many things have happened in the United States, but this is the first really large-scale fraud case we’ve seen on this side of the ocean.” The Financial Times reported that the Ahold case was the most significant white-collar criminal case ever pursued by federal authorities in the Netherlands.

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