THE HAGUE - St. Maarten/Italian casino owner Francesco Corallo has decided to retract his formal complaint against the online news site Knipselkrant Curaçao.

 

The Curaçao newspaper Antilliaans Dagblad reported on Wednesday that Corallo’s lawyer Gerard Spong from the Netherlands on January 19, 2016 had withdrawn the April 2015 formal complaint against the Knipselkrant. The news site was accused of defamation and insult by referring to Corallo as “mafia buddy” ("maffiamaatje")

 

After the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Curaçao refused to pursue the complaint filed by the local law offices Sulvaran & Peterson, Spong took the complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office in Rotterdam. Here too, no follow-up was given to the complaint. Reasons given were the freedom of press and the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office had far more important cases to deal with.

 

Spong then filed an appeal at the Court in The Hague in an effort to force the Prosecutor’s Office to pursue the investigation of the Knipselkrant. That appeal has now been withdrawn. Spong has provided no motivation for this decision.

 

Member of Parliament (MP) Ronald Van Raak, who has also been warned to refrain from using the term “mafia boss” or face a formal complaint, said on Wednesday that he welcomed Spong’s decision to drop the complaint against the Knipselkrant.

 

“It can’t be that dubious casino owners can decide what politicians and journalists say. I also hope that this will result in a change of culture where people are not intimidated by questionable business people,” Van Raak told The Daily Herald. Corallo also filed a formal complaint against Van Raak in July last year for calling him “mafia boss.” So far, Van Raak hasn’t heard of any follow-up by the Prosecutor’s Office.

 

Van Raak said the process to tackle corruption and to remove “bad money” from politics in the Dutch Caribbean was off to a good start. He mentioned the trial against former Curaçao Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte, the investigation into the persons who gave the order to murder Pueblo Soberano Leader Helmin Wiels in May 2013 and the international, large-scale investigation into the alleged ties between the underworld and the upper world, specifically the gambling industry and government, in St. Maarten and Curaçao.

 

The MP said the objective of the links between the underworld and upper-world investigation was to ensure that St. Maarten gets a fair chance, clean politics and a system where no longer decisions were made under the influence of bad money.

 

Van Raak said there was cooperation from the side of the United States and Italy in this investigation. The authorities of these two countries are very much interested in the results of this investigation, he added. He said that honest people and truthful entrepreneurs have nothing to fear in this investigation.