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MdR should pay as much as he can for he really abused his power and position again and again...

give Ruyter all the fault. this was reckless of him and he should the bill with all his money.

BS, Kordak was very clear on irc, saying "make the arrangements" . 😛

Your word against his. No proof of that.

No, he did not, quit lieing.

I never use the word arrangements since I can't spell it right. Besides of that I did not ever say to hire mercs at all, I only said CO's will be good. Stating such a lies as here does not really improve your credibility.

Kordak, I understand very wel that from the moment it was clear that their efforts were in vain, you'd see a way not to pay. 😛

The mercenary scandal from last month is absolutely ridiculous and for them to hire those mercenaries at such a high price is insane. And now it's causing problems for this month's government. It's shameful. Let's hope it can be resolved in a way that doesn't hurt our nation's reputation or make an enemy out of a very powerful MU.

Wow, I hope we find a way to get the funds back

Is it possible to hire a MU without congress aproval?
It is actually incredible this happened, actually I have no words for this scandal.

It is not possible without Congress approval to spend more than is in budget. Not relevant if its for the CPs new swimmingpool or for hiring a MU.

Yes of course it is. As long as it is no gov action. In this case it was no action from the gov. Only a discussion between two people (that happened to be gov members as well) that was not clear to them both apparently. Other gov members like MoD for way to handle a war issues nor MoF on the way to handle finances were not consulted. So it was no gov action and gov nor congress didn't have anything to do with it.
It only became a gov/congress issue once our current CP asked congress for approval to pay for it. Not accompanied by anything like a plan to come to a reasonable price (at least 5 times the normal price seems to be promised for D4 damage) nor an idea which sources should be used. And as that immediately means it's from gov budget which is by far not enough. For that reason I warned our CP he could end up with no budget left and later posted this on forum for congress to know as well. Unless it will be solved by other means current gov did overspend about 22 times the original budget given and 7 times the budget that was adapted towards a higher level after repayment from Poland of our taxes we lost to them due to the occupation.

Apparently our CP can't cope with financial restrictions and someone that is pointing him towards the fact he should stick to budget and he therefore felt it necessary to fire me. You could call that not being able to work together. I feel it's more like someone desperately trying to get extra funds to play with. But you can read a rather large portion of the discussions on that on forum...

So if it were one/two individuals spending an insane amount of money, why would the government get involved at this point?
I don't see how we could overspend 22 or 7 times the budget without any prior congress approval. If there are repercussions for this from the point of view of the mercenaries they should be aimed at those individuals they had actual contact with.

If they want to deal with a country, they should make sure they're actually talking to the gov instead of to some individuals...
If they only talked with de Ruyter as described above, then they have no way to claim that our gov hired them. He was our MoFA, not our MoD or CP, which would be the more obvious representatives of our gov in this case.

And our congress accepting to pay a bill of 120k CC from our emergency fund for doing damage for Belgium against the UK (not eNL against Germany like the article claims) is absolutely ludicrous.

To me the case seems clear: one person hired mercs, so only one person should pay.

Additionally, he was removed from our gov when this scandal leaked out, which definitely means our gov immediately distantiated themselves from this.

Let's phrase this differently: suppose the Dutch PM asks a building company to build a huge villa and says the Dutch government will pay for it. When it's done, they present the bill, but when the government sees it, they cannot comprehend what on earth they should do with such a villa, and remove him from office. The government will definitely never consider buying the villa, but instead will claim it's his problem.

Fully true Djirtsdew. That's why I stated is was no gov concern until the point Aries made it one by asking congress approval to pay. As he didn't state the way it was funded, nor ask congress approval to use EF or other means he was, in my book, immediately overspending his budget.

As for if it's one person ore two I wouldn't know. The only thing we know is that two individuals discussed it, apparently were not clear enough towards each other and there fore we had a mess that was contained there. Now however we have a nationwide mess where in the meantime our CP will continue on a path to spend even more I presume ruining our reserves again.

Our reputation as a country is on the line. No matter what you think should be the situation the truth is the MoFA of our country, who represents our country on a international basis, requested mercenaries based on our country. It's crazy, but that's the way it is.

True Aries. If you however wanted to solve it then you should discuss matters in stead of just acting without ever consulting anybody. What you did, bluntly ask congress to approve payment, ain't the way as you will never get them to agree on that if it has to come from our EF. Perhaps if you discussed matters and came with a solution like for instance;
- We discussed matters with the ones involved and came to an agreement with the mercs to lower the bill towards 60k.
- We also made a deal with the players involved to let them pay 30k
- As for the remaining 30k we think it's best that we as a nation pay for it to prevent a damaged reputation.
- Given our budget however that is very hard for my government. We are willing however to skip one MPP and lower the remaining budget ussage by another 5k. That leaves 15k to be paid.
- We therefore ask Congress to agree on a payment from our reserve to pay for the extra 15k.

If you had discussed matters in stead of bluntly acting that would have looked way better. Hell I would even have supported you very much on it.
It would have caused a setback again for you're budget to work with and that seems you're main issue; You want to stick to an impossible budget although I told you I was working on ways to let it go up and even could come close to it.

The main problem you have in my view however is you act way to impulsive without giving it 2nd thoughts and without consulting people. You also want solutions to be available instantly which can, for situations like this, never be done. That way you do create a mess no different than the merc issue itself. potentially even a greater one as you seem to continue on a course of overspending even more.

It's impossible to get the bill down to 60k. You may read the forums to see what I've done so far though.

Also, the thread was up for 10 days with absolutely no progress on the subject, so I put it to a vote which was approved by congress. The entire process was democratic yet you make it sound like it isn't.

I'm giving an example Aries. Not a 100% solution so no doubt some number may vary just like perhaps some concerned citizens could have come up to pay part of it or yet other variants. A potential solution could have been discussed but you choose not too. In stead you choose the easy way; Hold up you're hand and ask for money. Just like you do with budget; I gave you hints on how to get extra funding, yet the only thing you did so far is ask congress to give you extra budget. Oh and appoint another MoF ofc. One that doesn't keep you on a tight budget I guess. I have serious doubts about his abilities to oversee finances based on the one liners he usually uses but I have no experience with him as MoF so we'll see and hope for the best en me to be proven wrong on this.

And true there was no progress. If I recall correct congress didn't see it as a job for themselves. And they were right at that point.

I don't know why the EF is mentioned here because there hasn't been a vote that this should be paid through the EF. As long as such a vote isn't held, it can't be paid by the EF.

It doesn't actually say how it should be payed so basically any funds can be used to pay it. That would be the basic interpretation.

@RikW & Aries: you're right. The vote that was accepted does not mention taking money from the EF for exceeding the government budget, so probably it will take at least half a year to pay if this is done solely within the government budget. Of course private funding could also be used to speed up the process.
Since no agreement was made with the mercenaries about when payment would occur, this is of course a perfectly acceptable course of action...

If the government wants to spend out of their budget, indeed a vote should be started which explicitly mentions this. As such the currently accepted vote should be considered a declaration of eNL's intention to fully pay the mercenaries, something which before this vote was never going to occur, because this wasn't a gov-sanctioned hire of mercenaries.

Let me try to explain the international implications again if we don't pay this bill, something I neither created nor wanted mind you. If we do not pay this bill a call will go out to every mercenary on this game to not fight for Netherlands. On the irc chat #mercenaries where all mercs go there will be a warning label telling people not to fight for the Netherlands government. Many mercs are also heavily tied into other foreign countries. These foreign countries will read this label and wonder why Netherlands doesn't pay its bills and probably refuse to do business with us. Our reputation is already horrendous for most countries in this game and taking a blow like this will surely make us unwanted completely. But hey, I suppose some of you can continue to be on your high horse and claim we shouldn't pay because you don't understand foreign affairs.

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Agreed. my response is however a post higher already.

More screenshots about the deal. It looks like MdR did act on behalf of our country ad MoFA. I'll let you guys judge it.

We gotta pay them..... not paying them should not even be a option !

Damn.... I'm wondering what kind of DMG we got from them...

We look like the Netherlands in RL, let all our money flow to other country's in the EU/world...