After years of cross-border legal wrangling over a failed large-scale poultry production project in Suriname, the District Court of Rotterdam has issued a landmark ruling ordering two companies to pay more than $4 million in principal alone to the claimant company Kirpalani’s N.V., while also holding two individual executives personally liable for additional damages stemming from unlawful conduct.
The legal conflict traces its origin back to a 2018 partnership agreement between Kirpalani’s and De Vliegende Eend B.V. (DVE) centered on the Kippie integrated poultry project, which aimed to establish large-scale chicken production operations in Suriname. To fund the venture, Kirpalani’s first issued a loan agreement with a maximum ceiling of $2.5 million to DVE in July 2018. Two months later, an addendum increased the total loan amount to $3 million, followed by an additional credit facility of €600,000 extended in April 2019.
Despite the financial commitments, the project never moved forward into full operation. Disputes quickly erupted over how the allocated funds were spent, the parties’ adherence to the original contract terms, and the repayment of the disbursed financing. The disagreement soon spawned multiple parallel legal proceedings in both Suriname and the Netherlands, stretching out over half a decade.
A central point of contention in the Dutch proceedings centered on the cross-border transfer of project funds. Kirpalani’s alleged that portions of the financing it provided were moved from Suriname to the Netherlands without prior authorization and diverted to unrelated purposes, a claim that DVE and the two named executives, Asha Badal and Gerardus van den Bergh, repeatedly denied. The court’s ruling came after a thorough review of hundreds of bank transaction records, official partnership documents, and sworn testimony from all parties involved in the dispute.
In its September 23, 2026 ruling, the court found DVE and co-defendant Kwekerij Gerash liable for full repayment of the outstanding loan balances. The two companies were ordered to pay $2,869,126.16 under the original primary loan agreement, plus contractually agreed interest accrued from May 15, 2025 through the date of full repayment. DVE was additionally ordered to repay €912,676.04 under the terms of the secondary credit agreement, also plus accumulated interest.
The ruling carries significant personal consequences for Badal and van den Bergh. The court confirmed that both individuals acted unlawfully against Kirpalani’s and held them jointly and severally liable for covering any additional damages caused by their conduct. However, the court did not set a final monetary value for these additional damages in this ruling, noting that a separate legal procedure will be required to formally assess and quantify the total harm.
Not all of Kirpalani’s claims were granted by the court, with a portion of the requested compensation rejected. All counterclaims filed by DVE, Badal and van den Bergh against Kirpalani’s were also dismissed in full.
Given the prior legal action that had already taken place in Suriname starting in 2021, the Rotterdam court was also required to determine what legal weight to assign to earlier Surinamese court rulings, and which outstanding dispute points could be retried in the Dutch judicial system. The court ruled that some claims were barred from retrial due to prior Surinamese rulings, while others were eligible to be adjudicated in the Netherlands.
In addition to the principal and interest damages, the court also ordered the losing defendants to cover the majority of Kirpalani’s legal costs associated with the proceedings. The court further ruled that multiple core sections of the ruling are enforceable immediately, even if the defendants file an appeal against the decision, meaning that Kirpalani’s can begin seeking collection of the awarded damages before the appeals process concludes.
Thursday’s ruling does not signal the end of the long-running conflict. The final amount of damages for which Badal and van den Bergh are personally responsible still needs to be determined through a separate process, and the defendants are still eligible to file an appeal against the Rotterdam court’s ruling with a higher judicial body.