On 26 June 2024, NRC published an article (in Dutch) entitled “Bunq Employees Sneaked Peek at Customer Accounts: ‘It was too tempting’”. In the article, a few former employees of Bunq commented to NRC that they had engaged in ‘peeking at accounts’: viewing the accounts of friends, dates or colleagues.
Bunq considered this publication to be unlawful and brought summary proceedings against NRC. In a judgment in summary proceedings dated 23 July 2024, the Court of Amsterdam denied all Bunq’s claims.
Bunq did not leave it at that and last year requested several preliminary examinations of witnesses of (alleged) sources of NRC, including one cyber expert, who had stated the following in the above-mentioned NRC article: “The situation at Bunq shows that fundamental cybersecurity and privacy principles are ignored.” The Court of Gelderland allowed this request of Bunq on 1 September 2025.
In addition, last year Bunq requested the examination of two former employees, whom it suspected of having spoken to NRC. The online bank wanted to hear their testimonies on potentially unauthorized accessing accounts and leaking confidential information to NRC. On 18 December 2025, the Court of Amsterdam denied both requests of Bunq, arguing that Bunq had not sufficiently demonstrated its interest in the questions about peeking at accounts by these former employees. At the hearing, Bunq indicated that it no longer suspected one employee of this, and regarding the other employee Bunq failed to explain sufficiently what their testimony could add. Otherwise, Bunq did not sufficiently substantiate that these employees were involved in leaking confidential information. The questions about other (former) employees who had allegedly shared information were not considered sufficiently concrete by the Court, since Bunq did not clarify which information this concerns. The Court therefore labelled this line of questioning a ‘fishing expedition’, which is not what a preliminary hearing of witnesses is meant for.
NRC also argued that it was a ‘SLAPP’ (‘strategic lawsuit against public participation’). According to NRC, by chasing alleged sources this way, Bunq is trying to discourage people from cooperating in critical publications. This would complicate coverage of this topic. However, the Court has expressed no opinion on this. Jasmijn de Zeeuw of Free Press Unlimited did write the following on LinkedIn: “Ever more often, we at Free Press Unlimited see that, as part of our efforts for The Coalition against SLAPPs in Europe (“CASE”), Dutch media are confronted with attempts to retrieve the identity of journalistic sources via lawsuits. This pressure is sometimes switched to sources or experts who were quoted personally; they are intimidated with threats of lawsuits or subpoenas to give evidence. It is not rare for sources to withdraw from publications or broadcasts for fear of the consequences. Not only freedom of the press, but also our access to information comes under pressure this way.”
In these proceedings NRC was represented by Jens van den Brink.
