THE HAGUE--Martine Vis has been appointed new chief of the Kingdom Detective Cooperation Team RST in the Dutch Caribbean. Vis also will head the new Combating of Undermining Team (“Team Bestrijding Ondermijning”) which will work in St. Maarten.
Ministers of Justice Arthur Dowers of Aruba, Nelson Navarro of Curaçao and Edson Kirindongo of St. Maarten and Minister of Security and Justice Ard van der Steur of the Netherlands have approved Vis’ appointment.
Dutch Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk has given his consent to Vis’ appointment as the new RST Team Chief. The three-year appointment went into effect on Tuesday, March 1. Vis will succeed Teun Visscher and will work from Curaçao.
RST is in charge of combating serious and organised (international) crime in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, under the responsibility of the Attorneys-General of Aruba, Curaçao, St. Maarten and the Caribbean Netherlands islands Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands).
Vis, whose appointment was announced in a Dutch Government press release on Tuesday, is currently Head of Operations and Acting Police Chief of the Unit Rotterdam. She is also national portfolio representative for the Dutch Caribbean, on behalf of the Dutch Police responsible for cooperation with other police forces within the Kingdom.
As RST Chief, Vis also will be in charge of the new Combating of Undermining Team in St. Maarten. That team has been positioned at RST and will focus on investigation and prosecution of undermining crime in the coming two years, starting with St. Maarten.
The new team is part of the plan to strengthen the law enforcement sector in St. Maarten for which Minister Plasterk has reserved 22 million euros for the period 2015-2017. St. Maarten and the Netherlands signed a protocol in May 2015 to strengthen the law enforcement sector on the island.
The strengthening of the law enforcement sector is geared towards the combating of border-transgressing, undermining crimes that weaken the legal system. This type of crime is considered a direct threat to the Dutch Caribbean and the entire Dutch Kingdom.
The new team that will focus on combating of undermining crime also meets the wish of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament to tackle corruption on the islands. The Second Chamber adopted a motion of Ronald van Raak (SP) and André Bosman (VVD) in April 2015 requesting that the Dutch Government initiate a large-scale investigation of the alleged ties between the underworld and upper world in Curaçao and St. Maarten, in particular the relations between politics and the gambling industry.
