THE HAGUE – The Dutch Ministry of Defense identified 38 documents concerning the calculation of overseas allowances for personnel stationed in the Caribbean following a transparency request prompted by an erroneous allowance calculation for Curaçao and Sint Maarten.
The request under the Dutch Open Government Act, known as the Wet open overheid or Woo, was submitted on February 23 after it became known that Defense personnel in Curaçao and Sint Maarten had received excessive allowances in November and December 2025.
The requester sought detailed information about how the compensation paid to Defense personnel throughout the Caribbean is calculated.
The request covered dollar-euro exchange rates used since June 2021, calculation methods for Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, the purchasing-power and accommodation components of the allowance, underlying datasets, and internal memoranda and advice.
Information was also requested comparing Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and Sint Maarten and concerning when external service provider AIRINC last conducted physical research in Aruba.
According to a Woo decision dated August 13, searches conducted by the Defense Ministry’s Directorate-General for Personnel and its Human Resources Service Center identified 38 documents relevant to the request.
Defense said those documents had already been provided directly to the person who submitted the request while the case was being processed.
A subsequent search produced no additional documents.
The ministry therefore formally rejected the Woo request, but not because the 38 identified documents were considered confidential or exempt from disclosure. Instead, Defense said the documents it found had already been supplied to the requester.
The publicly available Woo decision does not, however, reveal the contents of those 38 documents.
That leaves several important questions unanswered publicly, including precisely which price data and exchange rates were used, how the incorrect October 2025 index was calculated and how much money Defense ultimately overpaid.
The mistake originated with an incorrect purchasing-power index supplied by an external party for Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Corrected data was subsequently provided, and Defense said it would apply the revised figures beginning in February 2026.
The excess payments made to personnel will not be recovered.
Without publication of the underlying documents, it remains impossible from the Woo decision alone to determine the full financial impact of the calculation error or how the allowances differed among the four Caribbean islands involved.