AIVD inquiry 'clears Mabel'

25 November 2003

AMSTERDAM — A follow up investigation by the Dutch secret service AIVD has reportedly failed to uncover any more compromising details about royal fiancée Mabel Wisse Smit, who caused uproar recently by lying about her relationship with mafia boss Klaas Bruinsma who was murdered in the early 1990s.

Prince Johan Friso and Mabel decided against requesting parliamentary approval for their April 2004 wedding after it became apparent Mabel had lied. Approval of the marriage was required for the third-in-line Friso to retain his rights to the Dutch throne.

The unborn child of Crown Prince Willem Alexander and his pregnant, Argentinean-born wife Princess Maxima already officially counts as the second heir to the throne according to the Dutch Constitution.

Smit initially said she only knew Bruinsma superficially and broke off contact with him when she found out about his criminal links. But at the end of September a former Bruinsma bodyguard, Charlie da Silva, said Mabel had been involved in a sexual relationship with the drugs baron.

The lauded human rights worker then confessed that her contact with Bruinsma — who was shot and killed in Amsterdam in 1991 — was more intense than previously admitted and that she had slept three of four times on his yacht, the Neeltje Jacoba, with Bruinsma and other guests. She continued to deny allegations of a sexual relationship.

But the Cabinet resolved on 10 October not to submit a request for parliamentary approval for the wedding. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Mabel had withheld information, damaging their relationship of trust.

“There is no cure for deceit,” the Christian Democrat CDA leader said at the time.

Balkenende decided that the AIVD — which was criticised for failing to uncover Mabel’s past before the media did — should conduct further inquiries into her background because her marriage to Prince Friso would bring her even closer to the Dutch throne.

But public television programme Den Haag Vandaag (The Hague Today) reported on Monday that the AIVD background check — aimed at uncovering whether Mabel had further withheld information — had not yielded any new facts, NOS reported.

Despite the heated controversy around Mabel — dubbed Mabelgate by the Dutch media — and recent rumours aired on weeknight TV gossip show RTL Boulevard that the royal couple had split up, due to the fact that no new facts have been uncovered by the AIVD, the wedding can go ahead as planned.

Subject: Dutch news

AIVD inquiry ‘clears Mabel’