Arthur Docters van Leeuwen (8 May 1945 – 14 August 2020) was a Dutch

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

and

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. He was member of the liberal political party VVD. Between 1999 and 2007 he was chairman of the

Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets The Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets ( nl, Autoriteit Financiële Markten) is the financial services regulatory authority for the Netherlands. Its role is comparable to the role of the SEC in the United States. History The Nether ...

, an agency of the Dutch government, which supervises Dutch financial markets.

Career

Docters van Leeuwen was born in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a list of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's ad ...

on 8 May 1945. After studying law (degree 1969) and various functions for the Dutch government, he became head of the Domestic Security Service, the Dutch

secret service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...

(currently the

AIVD The General Intelligence and Security Service ( nl, Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, AIVD; ) is the intelligence and security agency of the Netherlands, tasked with domestic, foreign and signals intelligence and protecting national s ...

), in 1989. In 1995, he was succeeded by Nico Buis, after Docters van Leeuwen became a member and chairman of the Board of Procurators General in The Hague (a board which supervises Dutch

public prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal trial ...

s). As a member of this board, Docters van Leeuwen came into conflict in 1998 with Justice minister

Winnie Sorgdrager Winnifred "Winnie" Sorgdrager (born 6 April 1948) is a retired Dutch politician of the Democrats 66 (D66) party and jurist. She was granted the honorary title of Minister of State on 22 June 2018. Biography Sorgdrager studied law at the Univer ...

( D66). The question was about a conflict of interest of another member of the board, Dato Steenhuis, who was on the pay-roll of the company that looked into the workings of the public prosecution in the region of which Dato Steenhuis, as board member, was responsible. Docters van Leeuwen supported Steenhuis against Sorgdrager; the ensuing breach of confidence between the two resulted in Docters van Leeuwen being fired from the Board. Shortly thereafter, in September 1999, Docters van Leeuwen became chairman of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets. In June 2007 Docters van Leeuwen stepped down as chairman of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets. After his retirement as a civil servant he became chairman of the Holland Financial Centre,

research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a p ...

at the Netherlands School for Public Administration and chairman of the advisory board of

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

, a company active in the field of security, investigations and integrity management.

Het Financieele Dagblad ''Het Financieele Dagblad'' is a daily Dutch newspaper focused on business and financial matters. In English, the name translates to ''The financial daily newspaper.'' The paper was established in 1943. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam. ...

- 31 maart 2008 - ‘'DvL' boekstaaft hilarische feiten'

Political career

Although at first a member of the social liberal D66, Docters van Leeuwen became a member of the VVD, for which he co-authored the new foundational program, the ''Liberal Manifest''. In 2006, he was a candidate for the VVD for the

Dutch general election Elections in the Netherlands are held for five territorial levels of government: the European Union, the state, the twelve Provinces, the 21 water boards and the 344 municipalities (and the three ''public bodies'' in the Caribbean Netherland ...

. He removed himself from the list though, after he obtained a lower (#10) position on the list than

Fred Teeven Fredrik "Fred" Teeven (born 5 August 1958) is a Dutch jurist, bus driver and former politician and prosecutor. A member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), he served as State Secretary at the Ministry of Security and Justice f ...

(#5). Fred Teeven was a public prosecutor in Amsterdam at that time. Docters van Leeuwen reasoned with his lower position than Teeven's on the candidacy list that "clearly the VVD chooses a direction that is not mine."

Personal life

Docters van Leeuwen suffered a heart attack at age 75.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Docters Van Leeuwen, Arthur 1945 births 2020 deaths Dutch civil servants People's Party for Freedom and Democracy politicians Politicians from The Hague