Rotterdam Fires Two Civil Servants Over Bribery Scandal Touching Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Two civil servants in Rotterdam have been summarily dismissed for allegedly accepting bribes to award over-inflated construction contracts — including asbestos treatment work at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, one of the Netherlands' most prominent art institutions.

Rotterdam mayor Carola Schouten briefed the city council on 28 August 2026, confirming that the municipality had concluded its own investigation into the alleged corruption. Three employees were accused of fraud in the case: one retired, and the other two were suspended and then fired, according to The Art Newspaper.

Schouten said the two unnamed dismissed employees breached the city's code of conduct by accepting gifts from the municipality's business contacts in exchange for possible preferential treatment. They are also suspected of forgery and passive bribery — the offence of a public official soliciting or accepting improper payments, as distinct from active bribery, which involves the person offering the bribe.

The trail is not new. The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad first reported concerns about potential corruption in building projects at cultural institutions in Rotterdam in December 2023, noting that formal suspicions had emerged three years earlier. In 2024, the Rotterdam city council asked police to investigate. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

The matter deepened in July 2026, when the public prosecutor shared new information suggesting the two dismissed employees had behaved substantially worse than the city's internal inquiry had found, according to the city's executive board.

A spokesman for Diederik van Dommelen, Rotterdam's head of financial affairs, said the situation is now a matter for criminal investigation. The dismissed employees have the option to contest their firing through an employment tribunal.

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen itself has kept clear of the affair. A museum spokesman said that since the institution's four buildings and their renovations are managed by the municipality, not the museum, it had decided not to comment publicly.

The museum, founded in 1849 through donations from private collectors including Frans Boijmans and D.G. van Beuningen, closed in 2019 for a major renovation. In 2021 it opened its depot — a publicly accessible storage facility showing 151,000 artworks — while the main buildings remained shuttered. The full museum, described in city plans as a "future-proof" building free of asbestos, is expected to reopen in 2029.

For now, the bribery allegations remain tied to the construction work meant to make that reopening possible. Dutch News, reporting on 24 August 2026, confirmed that asbestos removal at the museum is among the projects under investigation.

No charges have been filed. The criminal investigation continues.