Dutch to probe cause of credit crisis -reports

AMSTERDAM, April 15 (Reuters) - The Dutch Parliament agreed on Wednesday to hold a two-fold investigation into the credit crisis to examine its cause and the government's subsequent interventions in the financial sector, Dutch media reported.

The Dutch government nationalised the Dutch operations of Fortis and ABN AMRO in October for 16.8 billion euros ($22.2 billion), before providing a 10 billion euro capital injection to ING (ING.AS) and 3 billion euros for insurer Aegon (AEGN.AS).

The first part of the investigation will start soon and will examine the period up to September 2008, while the second part will look into the period thereafter when the government intervened in the financial sector, news agency ANP reported.

The investigation will look into the cause of the credit crisis, whether it could have been prevented and examine how the various supervisory authorities functioned.

Both investigations will take about six months to complete.

A parliamentary investigation is considered by many political observers as a watered down version of a parliamentary inquiry, which can involve hearing witnesses under oath. A parliamentary investigation cannot take testimony under oath, newspaper NRC reported.

The credit crisis and ensuing global economic slowdown has plunged the Dutch economy, the fifth largest in the euro zone, into recession. Dutch GDP is now expected to contract 3.5 percent this year, government think tank CPB said in March. (Reporting by Aaron Gray-Block; Editing by David Holmes) ($1=.7562 Euro)