I'm not saying that this couldn't have happened with a gTLD But why put your brand at the mercy of a government like that?
Edit: .eu might be an even better candidate for this requirement, but you can ask British former domain owners how that worked out
gTLDs just subject you to an additional layer of incompetence, namely from the company running it. The government where they're located can still come knocking. It's also not like e.g. .nl is run by the Dutch government officials, it's a nonprofit started by some people in the 80s iirc
ICANN have a mostly hand-off approach to ccTDLs. The intention is that each country decide on their own regulations and management when it comes to their country code specific domains.
.nl is a very special case, and it is true that the Dutch government was not involved. .nl was the first country code TLD created outside of the US, when the domain system still was part of ARPANET and operated by the United States Department of Defense. .nl was then transferred to a foundation 10 years later, and that's where ownership now resides.
ccTLDs are somewhat of a mess. Many are created in universities, then transferred to a company or foundation. Others were sold to companies from the start. In some cases, government have sold their ccTLD to other countries.
.se for example was created in a Swedish university, and then later the government took possession of it (or the university gave it to them, can't really say). Now there are laws that explicitly defines how it should be used and governed, which then a non-profit foundation manage the implementation.
As you might notice from the dates and names, this was very early in the history of TLDs.