10/02/2022
The Utrecht criminal lawyer Anis Boumanjal will file a report on monday on behalf of three victims in the allowances scandal because of discrimination by officials of the Tax and Customs Administration. He confirms reports about this in NRC.
After previous reports, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) saw no reason to start a criminal investigation. According to Boumanjal, however, a recent study carried out by accounting firm PwC on behalf of the Tax and Customs Administration has yielded sufficient new information to still do this.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, an investigation was not necessary, because the Tax And Customs Administration is part of the State and the State enjoys criminal immunity. That immunity also applies to individual officials, according to the Public Prosecution Service. Moreover, the Public Prosecution Service could not establish that civil servants deliberately discriminated.
According to Boumanjal, PwC's research shows that individual officials manually added data about ethnic identity and religion to the fraud detection system of the Tax and Customs Administration. According to the officials, these are risk factors for fraud. "Then you can no longer hide behind the system," says Boumanjal. "Then you are deliberately discriminating, and that is punishable."
According to the lawyer, the new information "justifies an in-depth criminal investigation, in which the new data is taken into account". If the Public Prosecution Service decides to dismiss the case again, it will consider a so-called Article 12 procedure to enforce prosecution. "Precisely when the Public Prosecution Service has doubts, it must submit the case to the court. Let them speak out about it."
The three victims that Boumanjal represents are two parents who have been victims in the allowances scandal and the owner of a childminder agency that has been accused of fraud. The lawyer has drawn up the declaration in such a way that other victims can join in.
