Judge rejects lawsuit: Hoefdraad to lodge appeal

Judge Suzanne Chu recently rejected the lawsuit that the former minister of Finance, Gillmore Hoefdraad, had filed against the state, the Ministry of Home Affairs (Biza), parliament and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Irene Lalji, Murwin Dubois

and Frank Truideman, Hoefdraad’s attorneys, will reportedly lodge an appeal. The attorneys had requested that the Public Prosecutor’s Office be ordered to cease its search for and the prosecution of their client. They explained that their client was the minister of Finance from 2015 until 2020 and can only be prosecuted after being stripped of his political immunity first. The Public Prosecutor’s Office on April 23, 2020 had asked parliament to strip Hoefdraad of his political immunity. Hoefdraad

insists that he neither committed any crime nor broke the law as mentioned in the request of the attorney general because his actions “were performed in the interest of the nation.”