Ries was the son of a prosperous Jewish draper. During his law study, he formed firm bonds with the future Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs Eelco van Kleffens, and with the future lawyer Harro Bouman. Being given to coolly analysing any situation, beginning with his own, as a young man he accepted his homosexuality.

Still at the university, Ries established contact with Jacob Schorer, the founder of the Dutch branch of Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. For some time he financially contributed to it, like his bosom friend Bouman.

After his studies Ries moved to The Hague, where soon his star shome as a brilliant civil servant. When only 28 years old, he was awarded a decoration by Queen Wilhelmina, and in 1927 he bacame acting Chief Treasurer in the Ministry of Finance. In 1935 he was finally appointed Chief Treasurer, one of the topmost official positions in Holland. In these years, as a financial expert he was a shrewd negotiator with german Nazi govrnment about financial and economic affairs.

On 25 May 1936, only one day after concluding particularly fruitful negotiation in Berlin, returning from a debriefing by Minister-President Colijn, Ries was arrested. A 17-year-old boy, Henk Vermeulen, had brought a charge of having had sexual relations for money with Ries.

Although Vermeulen was known as a pathological liar, police and justice gave all credence to the boy; Ries' solemn denial of the accusation was ignored. His house was searched, and his personal letters were confiscated and read by many. The Ries case generated a huge amount of publicity. Together with Ries, eight others had been arrested on Vermeulen's evidence.

The newspapers, probably tipped off by the police, suggested the expected arrest of many other higer officials. As usual with sex scandals, this did not happen. Ries was set free after a few days in prison. The examining magistrate turned out to be particularly prejudiced and lax: only after four months was Ries informed that all charges were dropped. Of the other suspects, eventually only two were given a (suspended) sentence. One of them, destroyed by the publicity, comitted sucide.

Apart from his lawyer, Bouman, the Chief Treasurer had a staunch defendant in a Social-Democrat member of the Lower House, A. van der Heide. He and several others debated sharply with the Ministers of Justice and Finance about the Ries case. The ministers reacted astutely: all members of Lower House were dumbfounded by reports, planted on top of the Vermeulen evidence, about allegedly contemplated homosexual acts by Ries and a soldier, 13 years earlier, and Ries' presence at a homosexual party. The intended effect, that anyone would think Ries a dirty homosexual, was strikingly attained.

His character smeared, Ries was released in December: honourably, but without a pension. He soon emigrated, and in 1914 went to New York, where he di a good job for Dutch anti-Nazi propaganda. He never returned from New York. Deprived of all idealism, Ries had still an extraordinary talent for friendship, evidence of which comes from his many candid, beautifully written letters.

The Ries case suggests an eagerness to kill the reputation of a brilliant homosexual Jewish official by judicial and police authorities, who partly had Nazi sympaties in the second half of the 1930s in Holland. To this end, many rules of justice and humanity were bent or broken. Ries' spirit, however, remained upright.