Dutch Probe Criticizes PM Rutte’s Office for Deleting Nokia Phone Messages

April Roach, Bloomberg News

Mark Rutte, Netherlands prime minister, speaks during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov walked out of a UN Security Council meeting where the US and its allies were criticizing President Vladimir Putin's government over the invasion of Ukraine, in a stark demonstration of the divisions opened up by the war. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s office didn’t archive text messages on the premier’s old Nokia phone sufficiently, a government body has concluded.

An investigation into his office’s handling of communications was initiated after Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported in May that Rutte had to delete standard text messages on his old Nokia phone because it had very little storage capacity.

Chat messages were insufficiently archived and fewer messages were stored than should have been, the government’s Information and Heritage Inspectorate concluded in a report published on Monday. Officials, who are responsible for the archiving process and for instructing the prime minister, didn’t always act in accordance to the archive law, the inspectorate concluded.

Dutch Premier’s Old Nokia Under Scrutiny Over Deleted Messages

Data loss occurred because Rutte “forwarded or paraphrased chat messages and then deleted the original chat message on his Nokia,” said the inspectorate.

The prime minister’s office is “grateful to the Inspectorate for the investigation” and is working on fully adopting its recommendations, according to a letter sent from Rutte to the parliament.

In May, Rutte has replaced his Nokia phone with a second iPhone from which he no longer deletes chat messages. The prime minister’s office isn’t the only department that needs to improve its archiving of chat messages and the inspectorate has therefore shared its recommendations more widely with other departments.