I’ve known Leo Boer of Scheepswerf Boer since the early 1980s. He built a 15-metre sailing yacht for me that I sailed around the world. We shared the same passion: a love of the water. In 1987 I suffered a shipwreck, and after I returned to the Netherlands I built a new yacht. 

As a journalist, I’ve written hundreds of articles, as an author I’ve published 13 books, and as a business consultant I’ve developed capital-intensive projects in South Africa and Nigeria. 

Leo Boer and I made plans to sail the route that Leo took as a young sailor on board the Dutch aircraft carrier HNLMS Karel Doorman. 

In 2009, Leo Boer’s tow Margaret was stranded on the rocks of Jacobsbaai on the west coast of South Africa. That is 20 kilometres from the place where I was living from 2003 to 2014. A three-year Chinese project, the construction of one pontoon, one 150-metre dry dock, and 12 push barges, was literally blown up with dynamite.

A few weeks after the stranding, in a cafe in Vredenburg, South Africa, I introduced Leo Boer to Luna Vermeulen. Luna was an influential businesswoman, the chair of the West Coast Chamber of Commerce, who decided to help Leo with his cargo after the stranding. Thus began a relationship that led, on 11 November 2017, to their marriage in the picturesque South African town of Tulbagh.        

Years of tiresome lawsuits against the owner of the tug, Posh Semco, and Rabobank followed. Posh Semco acted incompetently and Rabobank failed to properly insure the vessels on tow. Some of the lawsuits are still going on today.

In April 2018, Leo Boer asked if I would represent his business interests. His former administrator, warehouse manager, and assistant failed in the development of “Het Plaatje”, and Mickey Mouse (MM) failed to give proper guidance and discontinued maintenance on the machinery and cranes. 

Unfortunately I had to hold off on the boat because I was getting ready to leave South Africa and settle in Bonaire.

Leo, who was under treatment for metastasized cancer, passed away on 5 June 2020. 

Enough is enough

The cat’s away, and the mice are playing with the inheritance. The people who have to live in the house are the ones who suffer. When the activity of the mice takes the form of fraud and falsehood, I can no longer stand silently by. The information I have compiled as a journalist—I’m one of the few to have had a ringside seat for the escapades—I will set forth in countless stories on this website, in podcasts and videos.

An army of small-time crooks

The first person to attack Leo’s widow Luna Vermeulen and commit character assassination is Frederik. He suspects Luna of murdering Leo Boer. His son also hacked the files of LJ Boer vastgoed BV, which were stored in the Cloud. Salient information that will be published with proof. 

At the end of 2020, a dispute arose between the widow, Luna Vermeulen, who set out to defend her late husband’s shipyard by fire and sword, and (MM). The angle is that (MM), who is also a shareholder of SWB Shipyard and SWB Shipping, does not want to cooperate with Luna. In his eyes, she is not competent in business. Luna has accused (MM) of profiteering. (MM)’s lawyers, possibly financed by players in the maritime transport sector, approached the Netherlands Enterprise Court (Ondernemerskamer, (OK) for investigation into the goings-on at SWB Shipyard. Luna Vermeulen was expected to get out of the way.

An attack on the shares of SWB Shipyard and SWB Shipping followed:

SWB Shipyard: From Leo Boer, Luna Vermeulen inherited 55 percent of the shares and (MM) holds 45 percent.

SWB Shipping: Luna Vermeulen and (MM) share this company on a 50/50 basis. 

There is a fishy smell around the 45 percent of SWB Shipyard shares held by (MM). Leo Boer wanted to sail the route of the Karel Doorman and earn a little profit from his shipyard along the way. After all, he worked hard his whole life for it. Leo and I talked about this a lot. I advised Leo to hand over the shipyard to the staff. In return he would get a certain dividend each year on the stocks he had handed out. It was a plan I copied from a German shipyard owner who was literally and figuratively in the same boat.

The shares Leo Boer gave to his employees were quickly bought up by three staff members, including (MM), for less than 9,000 euros. They evidently thought their ship was about to come in. Each member of the triumvirate had his hands on 15% of the shipyard.

In 2012, two of the staff members sold their shares to (MM) for 275,000 euros. Now, at last, the money is coming in. More on this in upcoming episodes.

After the death of Leo Boer, the friend of Frederik, Leo Boer’s disinherited son, went after his father’s legacy. The legacy is Leo Boer’s financial estate on the day of his death. The son was disinherited because he cheated his father and hated him intensely, partly because of Leo’s relationship with and later marriage to Luna Vermeulen. Even today, he is still spreading all kinds of rumours along the lines of “Leo ran his first marriage onto the rocks” and “Luna murdered her husband”. He continues to make these claims even at the time of writing, 21 August 2021.

From: Leo Boer <meesleoboer@gmail.com>
To: info@zwendelfabriek.com
Date: Today 08:40

luna killed my dad

Nabod began a campaign of slander, which developed into a lawsuit. The vendetta will be described on this website in days to come. 

It’s striking that Frederik, Leo Boer’s son, and (MM) are working together. We will show that they, along with many others, are operating as a group of swindlers. 

Escalation

In January, (MM) disappeared from the scene. He has no further desire to cooperate with Luna Vermeulen and Luna, for her part, suspended him for mismanagement. A pretty confusing situation. First (MM) wanted to leave, then he wanted to stay, and then he was suspended.

Business operations were assumed by Caroline Vermeulen, the daughter of Luna Vermeulen. She lives in the Netherlands. Caroline, who has 15 years’ experience in business administration (plus a university medical title), is well qualified.  

Caroline brought order to the shipyard. Unfortunately the damage was too great to turn it around in two months. Every day, new shenanigans came to light. The rabbit hole, to use a term from the Matrix movie, went deeper than anyone imagined. 

In March 2020, the Netherlands Enterprise Court suspended the directors of SWB Shipyard and SWB Shipping, i.e. Luna Vermeulen and (MM). SWB Shipyard and SWB Shipping were run from that point by what is termed an independent director. The man trusted Caroline in the position of general acting director, gave her a free hand, and praised her spirit of entrepreneurship. 

The independent director’s task was to establish a settlement between the shareholders and to sell the push barges built by SWB Shipping on commission for SWB Shipping. The profit was to go straight into the empty coffers of SWB Shipyard. But that didn’t happen. The Nautico 10 and 14 were sold to a “friend” of (MM) for 100,000 euros below market value, i.e. 650,000 euros. But that 650,000 euros didn’t go to SWB Shipyard; the company only saw 407,000 euros. I know this from an acquaintance of the “friend”.   

In December 2020, Caroline appointed an operations manager who had enjoyed Leo Boer’s trusted friendship in the past. He brought his father, friend, mother, and sister into the business. Six months later, the man presented Caroline with evidence relating to the poor state of the shipyard. He presented himself as someone with a ‘heart for the company’. He even criticised the directors for their mistakes. 

By June 2021, however, we saw another side to this business manager: he took the Deutz engines, which were repaired in 2017 for 24,300 euros, out of the old shipyard tug and scrapped them. This was done under the nose of the independent director, who (according to a former employee) brushed the incident off by saying, “Oh well, the engines in that tug were an environmental problem”. 

Engines in a tugboat that don’t leak are suddenly an “environmental problem”? I’d sooner call it hollowing out a company. The only tugboat the company had was taken out of commission. As it turned out, the hope that SWB Shipyard was going to appoint a reliable operations manager was in vain. The business manager disappeared through the back door.

On 14 June, the independent director fired Caroline. The reason? To judge by the bickering between the shareholders, I would say that he was “frustrated” because no “agreement” had been reached between the two shareholders. In three months’ time he made no progress whatsoever. He is also annoyed, as Caroline Vermeulen explains, because she insisted that paying a technical temp agency was more important than his expense account and the bill from a transport company that came to pick up the tugboat engines. 

At the end of the rigmarole, Caroline was sued for “embezzling company assets”, her private bank account was seized, and she was reported to the police. And SWB Shipyard had run out of money because no push barges were being sold. It looked like SWB shipyard was being run into the ground. Every pretext was taken to drag Luna Vermeulen into court. The legal costs ran into the tens of thousands of euros, reaching nearly 200,000 to 250,000 euros, which came at the expense of SWB Shipyard. This bickering cost Luna Vermeulen an equivalent amount. We will be going deeper into the fight between SWB Shipyard and SWB Shipping. 

Bookmark this site. In the coming days, you will read the most sensational stories about the swindle taking place at SWB Shipyard.