The memo was drawn up in 2017 by a senior civil servant at the service, and then already referred to ‘reprehensible behavior’ by the tax authorities in what would later become known as the benefits affair. At the time, she advised to declare objections in a case against an Eindhoven childminder agency well-founded and to offer duped parents ‘a form of compensation’.
Falsely accused
At the time, the advice was discussed at the top of the tax authorities, but ultimately not followed up. It would be years before it became clear on what scale parents were the victims of a derailed fraud hunt. Thousands of people were falsely accused and had to pay back huge sums in benefits. Many people are still waiting for compensation.
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Cleyndert acknowledged that she saw the piece last year, but that it made “no impression” on her at the time. There had already been a decision by the Council of State and an opinion from the National Ombudsman with roughly the same effect. When she discussed the matter with, among others, then State Secretary Menno Snel, the memo was not on the table.
Bad blood in Chamber
GroenLinks MP Tom van der Lee asked Cleyndert whether she should have forwarded the piece, which he called ‘quite explosive after all’. “If I could redo things with the science I have now, I would definitely want to do that,” she said.
The fact that the memo was left in a drawer for so long caused bad blood in the House of Representatives. There has been dissatisfaction there for some time about the slow provision of information by the Tax and Customs Administration and the Ministry of Finance. When the piece was recently released, the most critical passages had been made illegible. It did not become fully public until this week, when the committee asked the writer of the memo during an interrogation to read the lacquered sections.
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