CAF - License to Disturb/Always Reject When in Doubt

Utrecht, November 27, 2019
Dear Mr. Uijlenbroek, Dear Jaap,
As a team, we were greatly affected by the letter dated November 15 from the Secretary of State to the House of Representatives.
Shocked that, in our view, a one-sided picture is being created about the actions of the CAF team, without
any form of adversarial and without any nuance or further explanation. This letter comes across to us as
character assassination, where we also reach signals that this did not happen accidentally. All of this makes us here
a strong sense of insecurity leaves us with a strong sense of insecurity and we wonder whether we, as officials, are actually still our
able to do work. We translated this feeling into five points. The text in the letter is in our eyes
so tendentious that we fear that this will also have consequences for research by the ADR, that
should take place independently and objectively. We would therefore like to comment on this
development is given the opportunity to identify the correct and appropriate nuances both internally and towards the ADR
to be attached to the said letter.
Because of the Secretary of State's letter to the House of Representatives and the unilateral image of what it contains
chosen, it is now becoming very threatening for us all. To date, we have been neutral to
to give management the space to arrive at a balanced view. The letter dated November 15 means that
we now feel the need to add the necessary nuance ourselves. We will therefore also respond
discuss with representatives of the unions and consider seeking further advice.
The five points:
1: How is it possible that we have often had to find that adversarial rules are not, time and time again, not
or were applied too late? This applies both internally and to the Donner Commission.
2: As employees of the tax authorities (in this case, but actually in a broad sense), how can we still work
carry out what we have simply been told for years, with the full knowledge of the highest management, who are also
once promised for years to support us at all times. Work that we have done in good faith
with also a lot of extra unpaid overtime. Now we have to note that the Secretary of State leaves the team
fall. What does this say about the legal protection of officials and the safety of the environment in which we
have to do our job?
3: The team has the right to a correct statement of the facts and circumstances. This does not only apply externally,
but now certainly also internally. Who is going to tell the real and more balanced story about the CAF team?
A team that has operated successfully for years with demonstrable results and achieved effects, for years with
compliments has done her job and literally has her neck (under the voile approval of the management)
outstretched. With regard to Allowance cases, who will finally go internal to the employees of the
Make it clear to the tax authorities that the CAF team has not had any authority to make decisions
on individual Benefit cases, who should or should not take and what actions should take place, how that will happen?
exactly what instructions should apply, how cases should be dealt with
be, how should be dealt with in case of objections, etc. The formal influence of the CAF team is therefore nil.
What signal, partly in the context of leadership and culture, will be sent if you let this team burn down now?
through media and politics and both internally and externally?
4: The impact of the Public Administration Act at work. How can you lead openly and transparently?
operate, if, six years later, all correspondence between the CAF team and the management is requested, and then
is once again brought out almost integrally without context and any nuance? By the way, we doubt it
strongly indicates whether the information should have been provided in this way. For example, there are also personal
views as well as strategic and tactical information in.
5: We also have a strong need to respond in detail to all issues that are now unilaterally and without hearing and
rebuttal has been sent to the media and politics. We will do this on the pages that follow.
For the record:
If, at Allowances or anywhere else, only 1 person has been wrongly corrected based on processes such as those
have run, humility is appropriate and this must be rectified. However, we do believe that the
responsibility must be placed in the right place and that cannot mean that a team does not
was responsible for the actual treatment at Surcharges, now that the poison cup is being handed over.
Substantive response to the Secretary of State's letter dated November 15, il. :
The passages where there is unilateral imaging, where every nuance is missing, and these are
written down without any form of adversarial:
Page 5: Concurrent three developments
Here is an incorrect passage, at least from the CAF team's point of view. “if fraud could not be proven
deficiencies in the administration of possible “facilitators” were used to create an intensive
to justify treatment of a large number of beneficiaries”.
In most cases, the CAF team investigated part of the population that belongs to the facilitator. In the
CAF 11 case is not about “imperfections”, but about very serious indications that it is in a major
majority of the files that were viewed were incorrect. Far too many hours were deliberately written, while the
facilitator that made that happen. He did not control anything and thus facilitated the opportunity between question parents and
childminders to write and claim too many childcare hours. The owner of the childminding agency gave during the
visit to be very shocked about these findings and reacted to them very guiltiously.
While deciding which group to ask out did involve a CAF member, this
decision could only be made from Fees themselves. How the further treatment happened, how
the supporting documents had to be assessed and what conclusions to draw from them, including
the CAF team is not involved in any way.
By the way, but people know that better at Surcharges, the question has regularly been asked whether the law is so strict.
Had to be interpreted, or maybe it could be used less disproportionately. Here are
discussions about it, both within finance and with SZW, but that has not offered a solution. The law
had to be strictly explained by the parties involved and this has also been confirmed by the Council of State for years.
Section C (from page 11)
Weekly reports:
The CAF team is completely transparent in its doings. This is indeed evident from the many weekly reports that are
set up and shipped. But they were also discussed with the management!
At the start, the weekly report was chosen as a means of including the members involved from the top of the service.
be able to take in everything that happened within the team. These weekly reports were not only informative, but
for the most part (especially in the early years) also determined the agenda of the so-called supervisor group of
the CAF team. In the early years, this included the General Director, a staff member of this director who included:
combating fraud in his portfolio included the Director of SMEs, the Director of PDB, the Director of Professional Technology and in the
first start also an MT member of the LTO. The weekly reports were not only written, but also
discussed. This way of communicating was highly appreciated and received many compliments. During the
first evaluation moment at the MT fraud, a comment was made about the boys' book-like tone of
these posts by Ivan de MT members. Shortly thereafter, we checked whether we should use this tone.
fit. That turned out not to be the case. We received many verbal compliments about the weekly reports, including a
a number of written ones, but unfortunately we haven't kept all of them anymore. By the way, there are still there.
We notice that certain passages from the weekly reports are now completely misframed and completely out of their
are linked to:
The Secretary of State writes on page 12:
To give you an idea of the inappropriate tone, I've included a few quotes that come back in the
requested information:
“At a childcare agency where the people behind it have also demonstrably committed fraud in the past,
Next week, visits will be made to childminders in several places at the same time. It is suspected that
everything is fake, but to justify stopping, we need a few concrete cases. If that is
detected, the cranes are closing (around 130 cases). This may also be due to an IH consequence. The ones to visit
people have been carefully selected this week”.
If this is now qualified as inappropriate afterwards, in our view, the
first sentence. This was a facilitator who had previously committed fraud. The assignment for the CAF team was quite
clear: no more money may be paid out if it is not justified. This had to be stopped as soon as possible.
Now that we knew that this involved a facilitator who had previously come into the picture for fraud, it seems
It's no wonder that the risk of things going wrong was assessed very high here. In such a situation,
it may have been even wiser to check first and then pay out. Now that wasn't
happened, we wanted to know very quickly how things were going here. That we have a very high chance that it was wrong
estimated, you can call it biased afterwards, but the facts later showed that it was indeed wrong.
This passage can be framed to explicitly include a biased attitude on the part of the CAF team.
to underline. In our view, however, that is not right.
Perhaps that's why it's good to put a few things in return, showing that the CAF team really isn't
was definitely out to find everything wrong. In our view, a risk assessment has been made for each case,
followed by fact-finding in the field. To underline this, we include two excerpts from the
CAF's annual reports, especially about the years when tackling fraud was a very high priority:
For example, in the 2014 annual report, we wrote the following passage:
Not all the agencies we've been to were wrong. If that was not the case, you could use the CAF campaign (often in 1 day)
it was quickly determined that it was reasonably well in order. In 4 cases, this turned out to be the case.
In the 2015 annual report, we wrote:
Although a number of surcharges have still been stopped and recovered in individual cases, 7 out of 30 turned out to be
completed cases, the administrative process at the childcare institution is finally sufficiently in order. Sometimes just because
risks or omissions were pointed out through the interventions, and we actually made improvements in the
have been able to observe behavior. In one case, the research had a (successful) preventive character.
The Secretary of State then writes:
In addition, the CAF weekly report also makes an inappropriate international comparison when it comes to tackling:
a facilitator “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. Those were George W Bush's legendary words at the
Saddam's arrest.
This term is now framed as if we compare facilitators to the actions of Saddam Hussein. That, too, is
pulled out of the air.
But there was indeed an overlap in case studies that led to this quote. This is because it involves both.
cases of a criminal who managed to stay out of the hands of the authorities for a very long time, where in
both cases, the authorities, at the time the perpetrator was caught, are very euphoric about the fact that this was successful
is. That is the reason for including this quote.
This is a rogue facilitator who had been suspected for many years that this was a
“big fish” that probably made a lot of wrong reports. As a result, not only the tax authorities became serious.
disadvantaged, but this ultimately also affected thousands of taxpayers. Tracking down the person
behind this fraud was particularly difficult. This facilitator had no fixed place of residence or place of residence in the Netherlands and was
here often only during the reporting period. Because he wandered around filing returns himself, he always used
changing IP addresses and there was no complete picture to make. Of course, he didn't use a concrete number either. So
now and then, this person showed up as an advisor, and sometimes also in matters that had been going on for a long time. That's what it did
there is a suspicion that this person should have a copy or similar of everything he
filled in, even if it was just to keep track of who his customers were. From the relatively small evidence that
a case was raised, where it was essential that an arrest take place at the
moment when the facilitator would also have his PC with him. The arrest itself was fairly spectacular, because
initial indications were that this person was active quite elsewhere in the country at the planned time
was. When it turned out that this was not the case, a quick action still ensured that a team came to the scene.
for an arrest. On balance, that gave a very euphoric feeling that it was possible to hire this person
keep. His PC contained evidence of nearly 3,400 filed returns with incorrect deductions. This person is
otherwise sentenced to a heavy prison sentence. A case where there has been suspicion for years
of serious fraud, but no one had managed to get a picture of this traveling facilitator until that moment
get, let alone keep. That made us want to describe the euphoric and proud feeling. In addition,
then opted for the now objected passage. By the way, only very positive reactions were received.
Everyone loved it.
The Secretary of State also finds the term “license to disturb” inappropriate.
License to disturb.
The first paragraph of the assignment given to the CAF team by the top management states that this team
is tasked with disrupting the actions of rogue facilitators. The slogan chosen here fits seamlessly there.
on. This therefore does not apply to individual beneficiaries, but to the approach of rogue facilitators.
Quote from the assignment to the CAF team:
1 Assignment
The Combi Facilitators Approach Team provides targeted supervision of facilitators with the aim of preventing fraud as early as possible.
possible stage to disrupt and stop. This Combi Team Approach Facilitators focuses on a rapid
intervention based on signals regarding the facilitators to be combated. The team assumes a
subject-oriented approach to the more severe cases and applies physical supervision if necessary.
The employee holding a pen with the caption “always reject when in doubt” did not work for the CAF team.
The Secretary of State continues his letter with the comment: Clear signals are also being sent within the
Tax authorities to arrive at an integrated fraud approach. “It takes a lot of effort to go through the entire chain to
with the defense of getting everyone behind tackling false receipts in the gift deduction. It is important that the
chain remains closed, to make it clear to the population in question that increasing such deductions
is pointless”.
If the Secretary of State had used adversaries, we could have simply made it clear to him.
why this was and is a bitter necessity.
1: If you looked at the total tax disadvantage of the number of returns filed incorrectly by a facilitator
then this was often high, but this was usually not a large amount per individual declaration. Because we know that
choices had to be made again within each link in the process, there was a big risk that posts in
objection or appeal were still granted on the basis of management decisions without substantive
review. So purely because of high stocks. Because many CAF cases were criminally registered, this was
an unacceptable risk. Criminal cases often take a long time and the risk that the officer would have to discover at court that
the tax authorities would ultimately not have maintained corrections, while they were justified, we could
don't walk. Not even in relations with the Public Prosecution.
2: Within Private Individuals, it turned out that it was common to accept the deduction of a donation, if requested
a receipt was sent by the interested party. Without further assessment of, for example, the origin
of the money, signals from false documents or the ratio between income/wealth and the donation.
Because we were dealing with a phenomenon that many receipts shown were falsely formatted, it has
cost us a lot of effort to give people of objections and appeals the insight that you're not so there anymore
could of course assume. This science is based on evidence from multiple fraud cases. There is
no system that allows an objection/professional practitioner to identify which documents are false. Monitor your
no objection/appeal, then there is more than a good chance that a proven false document will still be accepted as evidence.
3: Occasionally, we had to deal with a defendant who indicated that he did not want to litigate because he was alone
but went to court when he was personally 100% convinced that he was going to win that case completely.
This did not fit part of the Casuistics, such as the presumably false receipts.
All this explanation has been shared and discussed with the Directorate of Private Individuals. This management then has us in this
supported. The pieces of this are still there. We also monitored several times whether all attacks were carried out.
were eventually recovered. On the one hand because the supervisor group wanted to know and, on the other hand, because we
of course, we also wanted to know if this process went well.
In the Nieuwsuur broadcast, the Secretary of State also addresses the term “packing day” that the media does not have.
have extracted further context and explanation from the WOB documents. He's firmly distancing himself from this and calling it
cool doer.
Packageday
This term is now framed as if the team would take pleasure in hitting defenseless civilians with
harsh recovery measures. However, that's not what it's about at all. This comment must be posted
be in the right context.
The case in which this term was used concerns a rogue facilitator, where there is a hard
fraud approach is part of it. This term was used once in a recovery campaign by a rogue facilitator, who annually
filled out more than 1,000 returns with invented deductions, their income (approximately 50,000 euro per
year) did not report, who was now receiving municipal assistance (for which he later added)
was criminally prosecuted) and who transferred a large part of the funds received abroad.
By the way, the investigation report “the back of Amsterdam” shows that the police also regularly
has packing days. Not to explain it properly, but we often see that work that in itself is hard to do
do, sometimes described lightly.
Page 13, CAF 11 procedure:
The Secretary of State states that CAF has investigated the facilitator and then continues as follows:
In 2014, the order was then given for regular supervision to meet the questioning parents in the CAF 11 case.
to request evidence to assess the right to childcare allowance.
Although the Secretary of State should know by now that the CAF team had no authority to carry out assignments.
to give, he leaves it open in this letter who actually gave this assignment. That's a shame, because that would
have clearly nuanced the tasks, roles and powers of the CAF team. In the interviews at the ADR,
has already been confirmed several times that giving orders for actions under Supplements only by employees
of Surcharges may have been taken. This includes everything described on page 14. This is a process
that took place right behind the door at Surcharges and did not involve the CAF team in any way.
By the way, on the rest of pages 13 and 14, Toeslagen itself could also be a very nuanced story.
explain exactly how things went and what considerations played a role. This information must also
have now been submitted to the ADR, but has also been discussed earlier at the ministry.
Further section E: Use of (second) nationality
The Secretary of State states that Hil has encountered 11 cases outside CAF where nationality has been an issue.
For example, in response to a fraud signal as part of the gift deduction, criminal investigation was carried out into
the suspect's background. In that context, a request was also made for a query containing nationality.
In addition), it was subsequently concluded that this does not provide a clear reason not to specifically focus on a group.
Dutch people to zoom in.
It is not clear to us exactly what case this would have been. There was no adversarial hearing,
so we can't post this text. Once we know that, we can check again what exactly has here.
played and what context might be associated with it. In any case, we have no idea what about the text that
investigation would have been carried out into the suspect's background. Let us know exactly where this is
it's about and then we'll get back to this.
The Secretary of State continues: “Documents have also come up in other CAF cases showing that
use has been made of (second) nationality or characteristics that indicate a non-Dutch origin. There
a few quotes are included without any context, nuance and again without any adversaries.
What the Secretary of State “forgets” to mention is that the case (gift deduction) involves a very
concrete matter and not to discover if something might be wrong. There is evidence that fraud is being committed,
but we still didn't know exactly what size and by whom. Reading back the documents about that
we conclude that, in this case, the service management itself wanted to know the extent of this phenomenon.
The nationality query request for the false donation case was submitted by the CAF team and discussed with the
leadership. This makes it clear that we were very aware of the sensitivity of this theme and therefore this
have let the request go through management. But because there was a concrete reason.
In this case, based on concrete signals, there was clear evidence that in a certain group (whose
(not yet known exactly) there was a massive fraud, by using false
receipts. A suspect who emerged from a regular CAF investigation into high deductions has during
his interrogation by the FIOD indicated that more facilitators were selling false
receipts and also that he had the impression that this form of fraud was widely spread within his community.
He indicated that around 70% of the people in the Islamic community would participate. For the
combating this, you should then consider how to get an idea of the possible size and group and how to determine the
can detect and correct people who may have deliberately included incorrect gift deductions in their returns.
That is what has been attempted here. People are not just portrayed for the sole reason of their origin. The reason
was: Relatively high deduction for donations with a relatively low income and a relatively low age. In there, would you still
should look at a specific group, because that's how the suspect explained. It was about the
Islamic community and not about everyone. Not because we want to discriminate against someone, but because
concrete and firm indications are that fraud has occurred within that group. We do exactly the same with others
groups, no matter who it concerns. After all, we are looking for returns via various means that are on one or
another way to “belong to each other”. This can also be a zip code area, a specific concrete number or IP address, or
a certain description in the declaration, which we know is associated with a certain section and description
is being cheated. In our view, logical and normal. le is not looking for a certain aspect, but when it turns out that a
specific aspect is a determining factor in fraud, and if you have concrete evidence of that, it seems to us
logical that you then try to get an overview of the entire size.
We look at everything and everyone and look at patterns that differ significantly. When you zoom in on a particular pattern,
then it sometimes turns out that you are dealing with an ethnic group. That's not what we're looking for, but that
can therefore be seen from the analysis. And if we clearly see that there is a pattern in a certain group, then search
we'll keep checking to see if we have everything in view. And that is what has happened here in particular.
We would like this case to be presented to the AP with the right information and in the right context.
The right question should then be: Are you allowed to research the extent of a specific phenomenon such as
you have obtained concrete evidence that a specific group appears to be massively wrong? That, then, is the
relevant question. If the answer to that is no, the follow-up question will have to be how to do it in such cases
should act? After all, we do want fraud to be addressed and for the group concerned to do so.
is determined accurately as possible.
Case B (Surcharges)
There is also a story behind the case concerning Ghanaians (arena). We did not independently search for these
group, but the group was provided to us by someone from LTO, because they had signals that we were at great risks there
walked. So by a colleague who came with a signal that he had indications that it was very wrong there. We sit
than in the wake of the Bulgarian fraud, where in the past there were signs that there were groups of buses here
came to collect Allowances had been ignored for far too long, causing a scandal later.
So should we have ignored this signal? Was that actually possible at that time? How else did we have it?
have to do it?
We looked to see if we saw any strange patterns. The population was provided to us by the colleague at LTO and so
we haven't even created a profile independently (according to the analyst at Allowances), but is the
list of social security services that it would concern passed through the Allowance System. It turned out to be really not so bad what went through.
this group of Allowances was claimed. Through the analysis, we were therefore able to substantiate that it was LTO
the presumed high risk was not present. Had we not watched the signal, it was probably the myth.
maintained that there was probably something wrong here, but that no one intervened. That was something that was in
that time really wasn't possible! We're really asking ourselves how we should have done this differently.
According to the analyst at Surcharges, four IP addresses appeared to be used frequently. Because, as a CAF, we have an assignment
had to look broadly, it was assessed whether these IP addresses might also be special for other means
showed patterns. This analysis is not based on ethnicity, but based on the analyst's conclusion from
Surcharges that four IP addresses stood out. The conclusion for CAF Broad was that two IP addresses are already known
were from a previous case that was already pending and nothing else happened to this case.
Finally:
The above does not show that the CAF team has been successful in its approach.
With regard to Allowance cases, the CAF method proved to provide a very quick insight into whether or not there was
something was going on. A combination of data analysis and outdoor supervision makes it possible to quickly assess
whether certain signals are confirmed or can be debunked. Three things in which the CAF team has
preliminary investigations have partly led to around sixty criminal investigations. In a dozen cases
adjustments have been made for various tax resources. Converted into tax money, this has several
millions in revenue generated. A number of phenomena have also been clearly uncovered, such as:
hijacking issues, target groups, grandpa/grandma care and the (dis) functioning of the counter-information position. There is
not only acted repressively, but certainly also contributed to solutions in, for example, laws and regulations or in
interpretation of those regulations. All this is also evident from the weekly reports and the annual reports.
With regard to our largest file (the IH system fraud), the approach also appears to be very successful.
If you have any questions about this, please involve us from the start, because in many cases we can retrieve
what was going on, what happened, what considerations were made, what context and nuance were involved in a
certain thing belongs.
In addition to preparing cases for Allowances, the CAF team has focused on cases related to
organized systemic fraud in the IH and phenomena in the IH. In addition, tools have been built that provide insight and overview.
provide and make it possible to quickly and properly assess a group of returns. This could be the start for a
further investigation. This research always consists of asking questions first and then assessing and correcting where necessary where necessary.
there is no right to it. To illustrate, that led to the criminal prosecution of 50 facilitators. The beforehand
estimated disadvantage in all these cases was approximately 35 million euros and amounted to approximately 80,000 filed
declarations. There has only been an acquittal once. In addition, many standard-setting discussions were held.
with facilitators. This approach has led to substantial improvements in the declaration quality and several
proposals for improvements in the declaration program that prevent improper use and the control of the
making real fraudsters more possible. Where it is ultimately necessary to litigate concerning the accuracy of the
filed returns and the associated deductions, almost every case is submitted by the tax authorities
won.
In contrast to Allowances, the treatment within Private individuals of posts that fall under CAF cases is the same.
arranged that the exchange of information from the CAF team to Private Individuals and vice versa is in good order. that
ensures an adequate approach that is strict where necessary and less stringent where possible or necessary.
The IH chain is aware of details from the gate to collection, so that they are correct and appropriate
decisions can be made. The CAF team does not influence to levy wrongly, but to levy correctly
to make levying, objection and appeal possible. Due to the structural and long-term shortage of
After all, capacity is it a pipe dream to think that every report, objection and appeal will receive the treatment that
is required. A lot of things that should be assessed in terms of content according to the ejection are
guided through the systems unseen so that the finish costs no capacity. Aileen by supervising this very well
and to sticker, it is possible to have the work assessed in terms of content. Especially in criminal investigations
this is desperately necessary, otherwise attacks will be wrongly reversed by the machine without
substantive assessment, which cannot be explained in court by the prosecutor. The tax authorities that do it
prosecutes incorrect returns and the same declaration honors content in the objection or appeal phase, again: ten
wrongly! This is how it happened before the CAF existed, and that led to critical comments from the OM at that time.
Then the remark that there is no system where employees can levy, object and appeal.
find out whether certain documents proven to be permanent are qualified. Without proper guidance by the CAF team
these would be accepted as real.
There has been regular positive publicity with regard to the CAF team, both internally and externally, with even
the media that are now moving in this way were very interested in this approach.
In terms of staffing, we have been supported at many times by middle specialists, especially formal law and
recovery. They participated every week, so a lot has been reviewed from that side as well.
Finally, we would like to say something about the method of documentation and its quality. Reach us
reports that this would not be correct. Both in the registration of the CAF team's ongoing files and in
With regard to the method of documentation, it appears that almost everything can be found. A lot was stored in
folders that are numbered by case. In Excel, we kept overviews of the state of play of all files.
The larger files also contain logs. Filling it was not 100% successful, partly due to a temporary defect
of support and the multitude of current cases, but all in all, it is certainly easy to reconstruct. The door
our factual report provided to you in the CAF 11 case is one example.
Please comment on this.
Sincerely,
The CAF team