The CAF Team Story: Unfairly Accused, Ignored and Abandoned
The CAF Team Story: Unfairly Accused, Ignored and Abandoned
The letter ends with an appeal from NCF Chairman Albert van der Smissen: “Get the truth out about the CAF team!” On July 19, 2023, NCF, the union of officials of the Ministry of Finance, wrote a letter to the top of the tax authorities, the media and politics. The letter contains the story of the CAF team, which feels like a scapegoat for the Benefits Affair. Things went wrong with the Tax Administration during the Allowance Affair. All kinds of links in the system failed. But a lot also went wrong outside the tax authorities. Unfortunately, much less attention is paid to this. The ministries and politicians manage to keep their roles largely out of focus, while implementing organizations are viewed critically and are in the full light of the limelight. The team of employees that — unfairly — gets the blame is the CAF team.The CAF TeamIn 2013, the Combiteam Approach Facilitators (CAF team) was urgently established. The team did not aim to address the misuse of surcharges by individual citizens. The CAF team was tasked with identifying and addressing large-scale fraud and abuse organized by facilitators. This included, for example, childcare agencies that used the personal data of parents, sometimes ignorant, to fraud with childcare benefits or tax advisors who committed fraud with the income tax returns on behalf of several citizens. The CAF team was not authorized to supervise or sanction individual citizens within the organization of the tax authorities or the Department of Surcharges. The CAF team was not part of the Allowances Department. The team consisted mostly of employees of the FIOD, tax authorities or surcharges who were seconded to CAF. The team consisted of around thirty employees who often only worked part-time. According to the media and politics, this small group would have caused just about the entire Benefits affair. The fact that the Allowance affair started with the CAF team is a widespread misunderstanding. As a result, the team would be at the center of research for years. The Parliamentary Childcare Allowance Interrogation Committee (POK), for example, has completely focused on the role of the CAF team.The cause of the misunderstandingThe CAF team's wrongful accusation was caused by a lack of discernment. Before 2013, there was too little supervision and control of surcharges. That changed in 2013 when there was more widespread supervision in response to the so-called Bulgarian fraud.*). From that date, parents were confronted with the so-called “all-or-nothing approach” that the law had prescribed. Here, Toeslagen sometimes used a method that turned out to be very unfortunate for the CAF team afterwards. Indeed, surcharges used their own CAF codes and that use of CAF codes by Surcharges is the cause of the misunderstanding, resulting in the countless investigations into the CAF team that are continuing to this day, despite the conclusion of KPMG's independent investigation. It states that the CAF team had no authority to stop or recover benefits from individual citizens. It also appears that the CAF team was not secretly responsible for making decisions about individual parents at the Department of Benefits. The fact is that the Supervisory Board used its own CAF codes when imposing recoveries, without the CAF team being involved. These investigations with CAF codes were entirely the responsibility of the Department of Surcharges.DeclarationsThe CAF team has now been disbanded. It is the only team at the tax authorities where this has happened as a result of the Benefits Affair. A reason has never been officially given, but it seems as if the tax authorities found and addressed the instigators of the Allowance Affair. The members of the CAF team thus became the culprits of the Allowance Affair in the image. In the House of Representatives, for example, it has been asked to prosecute the “CAF cowboys”. The Ministry of Finance even filed a complaint against its own staff in May 2020 “for possible crimes in the benefits affair”. The CAF team was explicitly mentioned in the report, in addition to the Fraud Management Team and the Department of Allowances. In February 2022, the NCF trade union filed a complaint against the BOOS program (BNNVARA) after a call from presenter Tim Hofman to share the names of officials who would be responsible for the Benefits affair. BOOS presenter Tim Hofmann called on whistle-blowers via social media to report if they know the names of officials who did not comply with the rules with the tax authorities. “We want to know: who were they? Which officials still work there today? Which officials were fired or punished, like the tax authorities once punished the parents?” The official top immediately responded to the call, on the Intranet of the Tax Administration. People were very concerned about the call for a search for individual officials. However, Albert van der Smissen, chairman of the NCF trade union, the largest union in the tax authorities and the Ministry of Finance with six thousand members, was not very pleased with the response. The official top only took a stand internally, and not publicly.The damage is enormousThe damage done to the employees of the former CAF team is enormous. The officials have had a lot going on over them in recent years. They were mistaken for the main culprits of a drama. They've been threatened, chased by the media, they've been criminally investigated, and they're still facing intense, protracted investigations to this day. One of the worst things in life is being falsely accused. Acting false witness has long been considered a capital sin in all cultures. A shattered reputation appears to be hard to repair, even if it turns out afterwards that those involved have been cleansed of all blame. There's a saying that goes: “Reputation is a glass. Once it's broken, you can't put it back together”. It's high time to rehabilitate the officials of the former CAF team. “Get the truth out about the CAF team!”Read here the complete story of the CAF team, July 19, 2023: https://beroepseer.nl/Read here the Member Letter Unfairly Accused, Ignored and Abandoned, July 2023: https://beroepseer.nlNCF: https://ncf.nl/Final report on childcare allowance research presented: 'Unprecedented injust', Blogs Beroepseer, December 18, 2020: https://beroepseer.nl/blogs/eindverslag-onderzoek-kinderopvangtoeslag-gepresenteerd-ongekend-onrecht/Note*) The Bulgarian fraud was a tax fraud in the Netherlands in the early 2010s by a Bulgarian gang. This gang encouraged Bulgarians to register at a Dutch address and unfairly request retroactive benefits.
VHMF's response and position
The board of the Association of Senior Officials at the Ministry of Finance (VHMF) would like to refer to the letter from our colleagues at the NCF telling the story of the employees of the CAF team. The VHMF board recognizes this, partly based on the conversations we have had with our members. For the future of the tax authorities, it is necessary to end it as soon as possible. Where justice is done to all employees. To this end, we call on the service management. https://vhmf.nl/index.php?view=article&id=201:nieuwsbrief-20230723&catid=19
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