Perjury investigation:

Perjury investigation: top officials may have lied during benefits interviews
The National Investigation Department has launched an investigation into officials who may have committed perjury at the Parliamentary Childcare Allowance Interrogation Committee (POK). This is what a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service confirms after reports from Nieuwsuur.
Het ParoolDecember 12, 2022, 8:38 PM
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Manon Leijten, Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance 2013-2019, is heard by the Parliamentary Childcare Allowance Survey Committee.Image: ANP/ANP
The investigation was already started in June last year in response to a complaint by then-lawyer Vasco Groeneveld. On behalf of a group of 160 victims of the benefits affair, he filed a report for perjury against the two senior officials of the tax authorities and the Ministry of Finance.
It concerns the former boss of the tax authorities, Jaap Uijlenbroek, and Manon Leijten of the Ministry of Finance. In the interrogations about the benefits affair, the officials stated under oath that in 2019 they knew nothing about a memo that already warned of the tax authorities's reprehensible actions with the childcare allowance.
A complaint was also filed against employees of the tax authorities, including Uijlenbroek and Leijten as their managers, for embezzling these so-called Memo palms. “The memo was not initially shared with the Parliamentary Interrogation Committee. After that, after reports from RTL News and Trouw, it still surfaced,” Groeneveld said at the time.
Waiting
The Public Prosecution Service has not yet made a decision about possible prosecution. “The investigation is still ongoing. Eventually, there will be a final file that the National Investigation Department sends to the relevant prosecutor. Then it should be clear whether that is sufficient for prosecution or whether it leads to a sepot.” The spokesperson could not say how the investigation is going and who, for example, has already been heard or is still being heard.
Attorney Peter Plasman, who took over Groeneveld's case, says that he has not yet been informed about the investigation. “We're going to wait and see what comes out in the end,” says Plasman.
Earlier, the Attorney General at the Supreme Court, Jos Silvis, saw no leads for a criminal investigation against ministers and state secretaries in the childcare benefits affair.
Receipt
The benefits affair came to light thanks to research by RTL News and Trouw. This showed that in 2014, the tax authorities completely stopped and reclaimed the childcare allowance for around three hundred parents - the counts vary -. This is after an investigation by an anti-fraud team. This was found “irregularities” when audited by the Eindhoven childcare agency Dadim.
For example, it turned out that parents had provided incomplete or incorrect information when they applied for the allowance. Sometimes it was a wrong number or a missing receipt. That was severely punished. Because families suddenly lost hundreds of euros a month and also had to repay amounts from years before, they ended up in major financial problems.
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Jaap Uijlenbroek, who was the top boss at the tax authorities between 2017 and 2020, is being interviewed by the Parliamentary Childcare Allowance Survey Committee.Image: ANP/ANP
casualty
The parliamentary interrogation committee on childcare allowance found in its final report in December last year that the parents who were victims of the harsh approach had been done “unprecedented harm”. The “fundamental principles of the rule of law have been violated” and parents have “had no chance” for years, it said. The Donner Commission blamed the political climate in the previous two cabinets, focusing more and more on combating fraud.
The benefits affair cost Secretary of Finance Menno Snel the head, led to Lodewijk Asscher's departure as PvdA party leader and to the resignation of the Rutte cabinet in mid-January. Earlier it became clear that the Public Prosecutor's Office will not criminally prosecute the tax authorities over the affair. Several parents then filed procedures to get that prosecution done after all.

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