A sense of regret lingered after Maastricht mayor Gerd Leers announced his resignation on January 13. During his eight years in office, Leers had become known as a firm but fair mayor, who had managed to deal with some of the tougher issues in the city.

Regional governor Léon Frissen said Leers’ decision was "brave and a loss for the city". Dutch daily Trouw headlined its editorial "Well done, mister mayor, sorry about the minor mistakes". Leers’ "minor mistake" had been the way he had tried to deal with what he himself referred to as "the quagmire" he landed in when he bought two private holiday homes in the Bulgarian town of Byala in 2006.

Leers’ villas, for which he was said to have paid more than 230 000 euro, are part of a complex developed by Bulgarian real estate company Marina Black Sea Development.
One of the shareholders in the company is a top municipal official in Leers’ municipality.

Email exchanges and other documents published by Dutch-language daily NRC Handelsblad show an upbeat picture of the project and its envisioned profitability. In an email from September 2007, published by NRC, the top official told an investor that "negotiations with three ministers and the prime minister had already taken place".

He went on to say that 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".

Documents published by NRC showed that the contract for the sale of the villas to Leers had been signed by the son of the managing director of the company, who also happened to be the son-in-law of Leers’ neighbors in Maastricht, but who had no official status with the Bulgarian company.

Sinking in
According to publications in Dutch media, Leers had meetings with the mayor of Byala and Bulgaria’s prime minister, meetings at which representatives of the real estate development company were allegedly also present.

NRC quoted the municipal official as qualifying the meetings as "lobbies" because the politicians had influence over decisions concerning the construction of a marina adjacent to the villa park.

When relations between Leers and the owners of Marina Black Sea Development worsened, Leers turned to the Bulgarian ambassador to The Netherlands for help and advice, signing the letter as "Gerd Leers, mayor of Maastricht".

The ambassador allegedly told Leers to contact the Varna regional prosecutor.  After it turned out, in late 2008, that the two villas Leers had bought could not be transferred to his name because the entire project had been used as collateral in a bank loan, Leers then, in early 2009 and with the project still not ready and behind schedule, filed with the Varna regional prosecutor, accusing Marina Black Sea co-owner and managing director Dobril Dobrev of fraud. In August that year, the regional prosecutor concluded that the matter was a civil dispute, which should be settled in civil court and he closed the case.

Standards
Throughout his political career, Leers had set the bar for political responsibility high. When a report by the Bureau of Integrity of Dutch Municipalities, made public on January 9 2010, said Leers’ conduct had been "clumsy" and "unwise," accusing him of creating the impression of a conflict of interest in which his professional and personal lives overlapped, the Maastricht municipal council held him to the same standards.

Leers did not wait for a council vote on his political future and announced his resignation with an emotional speech, saying "this is not about Leers, this is about Maastricht".
The Trouw editorial the next day opened by saying that it is not often that a mayor is bid farewell with a standing ovation and tears, after having been seriously criticised for his actions.