Gerd Leers, mayor of the town of Maastricht in the south of The Netherlands, is under investigation after Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reported he had abused his position as mayor in a conflict concerning the construction of his holiday villa in Bulgaria.

According to a publication by NRC, Leers had sent a letter to the Bulgarian ambassador to The Netherlands about his conflict with the Bulgarian construction company. Leers allegedly signed the letter as "Gerd Leers, mayor of Maastricht."

In September 2006, Leers bought two holiday homes for a total of 234 770 euro, in the Bulgarian town of Byala from real estate developer Marina Black Sea Development. The top municipal official in Leers' municipality, Nico Nollen, was also one of the shareholders in the company.

In an email from September 10 2007, sent to an investor and published by NRC, Nollen says that "negotiations with three ministers and the prime minster had already taken place."

"The mayor and the chair of the leading coalition party visited us in Maastricht twice already and we have arranged a meeting with the European Commission in Brussels with the person responsible for EU funds for Bulgaria (6.7 billion euro)," Nollen says in his email to the investor.

According to the same email from Nollen, the municipality of Byala had 400 000 euro in EU funds available for the construction of a promenade and coastal reinforcements and was "looking to expand this EU application and construct with us a sea dam 150m into the sea, 300 to 500m perpendicular to the coast, under the pretext of coastal reinforcements."

In early 2009, with the project behind schedule, Leers filed with the Varna regional prosecutor, accusing the Bulgarian director of Marina Black Sea Development, architect Dobril Dobrev, of fraud. Based on preliminary investigations, the prosecutor had refused to start a pre-trial investigation and had closed the case.

The decision of the Varna prosecutor, as published by the NRC, showed that Leers had signed the contract for the sale of the villas with the son of Dobril Dobrev, Ivan Dobrev, who had no official status with the company. According to the NRC, Ivan Dobrev lived in Maastricht and was the son-in-law of Leers' neighbours.

The prosecutor's decision further shows that Leers had requested to swap the two villas he had initially bought for two larger villas that had been built later.

At a meeting at a Bulgarian notary in November 2008, Dobril Dobrev said the two villas could not be transferred to Leers because the entire complex was morgaged.

Allegedly, Leers had refused to pay the price difference between the villas, although the price of the two newer villas had not been set.

The Varna prosecutor concluded the matter was a civil dispute and should be settled in civil court.

NRC quoted Hans Nelen, professor of criminology at the Maastricht University, as saying that Leers had put himself in a vulnerable situation in which it had become increasingly difficult to separate personal and municipal interests.

Jan Reijntjes, emeritus professor law with the Open University in The Netherlands, was quoted by NRC as saying that "Leers has been careless" and had "manoeuvred himself into a dubious situation."

Political parties in the Maastricht municipality, meanwhile, said they would wait for the investigation by BING to conclude before commenting.

On October 15, Leers announced he would look into ways to create distance between himself and his villas, with the ultimate goal of selling the homes.