On June 26, 2024, NRC published an article titled "Bunq employees secretly looked into customer accounts: 'It was too tempting.'" In it, several former Bunq employees told NRC that they had been guilty of "account peeking" in the past: viewing the accounts of friends, dates, colleagues, and others.
Bunq believed that this publication was unlawful and brought summary proceedings against NRC. The preliminary relief judge of the Amsterdam District Court ruled in ruling of July 23, 2024, the preliminary relief judge of the Amsterdam District Court rejected all of Bunq's claims. We wrote about this earlier on Mediareport.
Bunq did not leave it at that and requested several preliminary witness hearings of (alleged) NRC sources over the past year, including a cyber expert who stated the following in the aforementioned NRC article: "The situation at Bunq shows that fundamental principles of cybersecurity and privacy are being ignored." This request by Bunq was granted by the Gelderland District Court on September 1, 2025.
In addition, Bunq requested two preliminary witness hearings last year for two former employees whom it suspected of having spoken to NRC. The online bank wanted to question them about possible unauthorized access to accounts and the leaking of confidential information to NRC. On December 18, 2025, the Amsterdam District Court rejected both of Bunq's requests. According to the judge, Bunq had not sufficiently demonstrated its interest in the questions about the account snooping by these former employees. During the hearing, Bunq indicated that one employee was no longer suspected of this, while for the other, it had not been sufficiently explained what additional information he could provide on this matter. Furthermore, Bunq had not sufficiently substantiated that these employees were involved in leaking confidential information. The court found the questions about other (former) employees who may have shared confidential information to be insufficiently specific. Bunq did not make it clear what information was involved. The court therefore labeled this line of questioning a "fishing expedition," for which a preliminary witness hearing is not intended.
NRC also argued that this was a case of SLAPP (in English: 'strategic lawsuit against public participation'). According to NRC, by pursuing alleged sources in this way, Bunq is attempting to discourage cooperation with critical publications. This would make reporting on this subject more difficult. However, the court did not rule on this issue. Jasmijn de Zeeuw of Free Press Unlimited wrote the following about this on LinkedIn:"At Free Press Unlimited, as part of our commitment to The Coalition against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) , we are increasingly seeing Dutch media outlets facing legal action in an attempt to uncover the identity of journalistic sources. This pressure sometimes shifts to the sources or quoted experts themselves, who are intimidated with the threat of lawsuits or summoned for witness hearings. Sources then often withdraw from publications or broadcasts for fear of the consequences. This puts not only press freedom under pressure, but also our access to information.
NRC was assisted in this case by Jens van den Brink.
