‘Explosive memo allowance affair cannot be found due to missing date and salutation’

Also striking is the refusal of a senior official to cooperate. Former State Secretary Menno Snel also partly did not cooperate.

The investigation revolves around a confidential memo from 2017 on the allowance issue, more specifically the working method of the anti-fraud team CAF-11. These officials had launched a hunt for parents they suspected were cheating on childcare benefits.

Civil servant Sandra Palmen-Schlangen, at the time technical coordinator at the Benefits Service, wrote in early 2017 that the team had to stop to dismiss parents as fraudsters. Instead, the parents had to be compensated.

under the hat

Despite the many requests for information from Pieter Omtzigt (then CDA), Renske Leijten (SP) and other members of the House of Representatives, the ‘Palmen’ memo never reached parliament. Not even when the full extent of the allowance affair became known in June 2019.

Also all kinds of Wob requests, including from RTL News, did not result in disclosure. The memo only surfaced three years later, when Omtzigt happened to find out about its existence. The consternation was immediate.

Now there is a report from consultant PWC, who investigated for the Ministry of Finance how the explosive memo could be kept under wraps for years. The independent investigation was personally promised by outgoing Prime Minister Rutte to the House of Representatives after the report was published Unprecedented Injustice by the parliamentary interrogation committee Childcare Allowance.

No cooperation

It is striking that State Secretary Snel refused to give access to his private telephone. ‘According to State Secretary Snel, his private telephone contained no business correspondence,’ the researchers write. One senior official of the Benefits management team also refused to cooperate.

The highest official of Finance, the director-general then decided to personally hand over his e-mail box to PWC. However, due to the refusal, relevant information may not have surfaced, the researchers say.

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Despite this, the researchers have not been able to demonstrate any ill will around the ‘Palm memo’. Due to a combination of unfortunate factors, the document ended up and remained in the proverbial desk drawer, they say.

no salutation

For reasons that are unclear, civil servant Palmen failed to put her memo in the standard form that is customary in the Allowances management team. “For example, the ‘Palm Memo’ has no date, no salutation, it is not clear to whom it is addressed, nor from whom it originates. The ‘memo Palms’ also contains no closing and no initials.”

Subsequently, the document was not discussed in an official meeting of the Allowances management team ‘which had an influence on findability.’ Not that the managers considered Palmen’s memo irrelevant: they sent it straight to the Director of Benefits. He advised to discuss it immediately the next day, only then there was just a heath day. As a result, the memo was not archived as usual.

political summit

Action was taken, however, and a conversation followed with the lawyer of the victimized parents about compensation. However, that yielded nothing. In addition, the Benefits Service continued to maintain that compensation was only possible if the parents submitted evidence. Later, however, it turned out that parents could not have that evidence at all.

In the end, Palmens confidential memo reached only 24 employees of the Treasury in three years, PWC writes. The researchers came across only one paper version. The political and official top remains unaffected. “Our investigation has not shown that the Palmen memo was provided to Minister Hoekstra, State Secretary Snel, the Secretary-General for Finance or the Director-General of the Tax and Customs Administration during the investigation period.”

Parliamentary Committee

Because the official and political top did not get the memo on the desk, the explosive document did not end up with the parliamentary interrogation committee, according to PWC. Although official Palmen sends her own memo to the official within Finance who collected relevant documents for the committee, he only had to forward documents that the minister, state secretary and senior officials had personally seen.

The question is, of course, whether PWC has uncovered the whole truth. According to the researchers, there is “no reason to believe that the Ministry of Finance has denied us access to information or to employees or government officials.”

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