Let op, this is not fake news! Dutch companies Philips and Ahold Delhaize donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of 26 US Congress members who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.
The Congresspeople might say the 2020 election results were fake, but the money they received from Dutch companies is very real.
At least that’s what an investigation carried out by NRC and US non-profit Donations and Democracy reveals.
Which companies are implicated?
The investigation analysed data regarding donations made between 2021 and 2024 by the ten biggest Dutch companies operating in the US.
It found that a whopping seven of them provided financial support to a total of 26 Republican Congresspeople who, after the January 6th 2021 storming of the US Capitol, voted against the 2020 election results.
Naturally, this is a position that has been widely regarded as anti-democratic.
While most of these companies only operate in the US, two of them are household names in the Dutch business environment: electronics giant Philips, and Ahold Delhaize, the parent company owning, among others, Albert Heijn.
Who donated what, exactly?
As it turns out, over the last three years, Philips donated $76,000 to anti-democratic Congresspeople, especially ones involved in parliamentary committees on healthcare, oversight, and taxes. 😬
This includes, for example, $4,000 to the current House of Representatives Republican leader, Steve Scalise, who has called the 2020 election result “undemocratic”, voted against investigating the Capitol storming, and spread fake news about votes being hidden in desk drawers.
In the same period, Ahold donated $20,500, mainly to parliamentarians from states where it has supermarkets, but also to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who the New York Times has defined as “the main architect” of the election results’ undermining.
Companies deny responsibility
Both companies maintain that they had no direct control over the donations, which were voluntary personal initiatives from their American employees.
They have a point: according to US law, companies cannot directly make campaign donations, but they can do so by supporting certain Political Action Committees (PACs).
While they can’t directly donate money to PACs either, they can support their activities in other ways, such as by paying for their rent and operations expenses, or their employees’ salaries.
READ NEXT | The Dutch East India Company was richer than Apple, Google, and Facebook combined
More importantly, companies often nominate members to the PAC board, which collects the individual employees’ donations and decides how to distribute them among candidates.
For instance, the treasurer of the PAC making donations in Ahold’s interests is… a well-known Ahold lobbyist. Philips, in turn, has evaded questions regarding the workings of the PAC making donations in its interest.
What do you think of Dutch companies donating to US politicians with anti-democratic tendencies? Let us know in the comments below.
