FORMER AHOLD LEADERS FACE TRIAL

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Ahold Chief Executive Officer Cees van der Hoeven and three other former executives and directors are scheduled to stand trial here for fraud next year, a source at Ahold confirmed last week.

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The charges relate to allegations that Ahold improperly booked revenues from some of its overseas subsidiaries prior to February 2003, when both van der Hoeven and Meurs resigned amid Ahold's revelation that it had overstated its profits by what turned out to be more than $1 billion in the preceding years. Much of that overstatement came from accounting improprieties at the company's U.S. Foodservice division, but the company also said it had inflated the revenues it received from certain acquisitions outside the United States.

Ahold itself is not being charged in the fraud case. Last year it agreed to pay a fine of about $10 million to settle the investigation with Dutch prosecutors.

The trial is expected to last seven weeks, meeting three times per week in that time span.