The tax authorities’ computer systems do not register what information corrupt employees have requested for criminals. This is contrasted with well-informed sources at the relevant government services NRC.
The technical limitation complicates investigations into corruption within the service. For example, it often remains unclear which address details, vehicle registration numbers or financial information have ended up in the criminal environment via employees of the service.
It turns out to be technically impossible for everyone who works for the tax authorities to keep track of what information they are looking for. This is partly because the service works with about 900 different systems, which are usually not linked to each other.
The situation leads to increasing concerns in the investigation because employees of the Tax and Customs Administration have access to a lot of data that is of interest to criminals.
money laundering
The problem with the tax authorities’ computer systems came to light during a criminal investigation into an Amsterdam tax authorities employee, who was arrested in July this year. He is suspected of breach of his duty of confidentiality, corruption and money laundering. During the investigation into that suspect, it turned out that in any case throughout 2021 there will be no so-called log data available from searches carried out by the employees of the service. The Tax and Customs Administration employs 25,000 people, 10,000 of whom have access to data of citizens or companies.
Read the whole story here: Tax authorities data are a gold mine for criminals
During a search of the home of the suspected tax official in July of this year, 920,000 euros in cash was found. Justice then tried to determine whether this money might have been earned by selling information to criminals. Due to the absence of ‘log data’, this could not be ascertained.
In a response, the Tax and Customs Administration acknowledges that it is difficult to trace all the actions of employees. According to the service, integrity issues can be “properly investigated”, because the Tax and Customs Administration can determine what kind of information a suspicious employee has had access to. The Tax and Customs Administration is also actively working to prevent abuse and corruption as much as possible.
The criminal case against the tax official will be discussed by the court in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
Registration Certificates
There are concerns within the investigation about the problems within the Tax and Customs Administration. This service relies on a wealth of information from everyone who pays tax or receives a surcharge in the Netherlands. Their database is also linked to files of, for example, the Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer where cars are registered by name. For criminals, access to this private data can be of great value in finding the addresses of rivals or tracing the owner of a particular car.
In the investigation into the outbreak attempt by Ridouan Taghi from the Extra Secure Institution in Vught, the suspicion also arose that there was a criminal contact with the tax authorities. It is not yet known whether this is the detained employee of the Tax Authorities. According to the police, Taghi wanted to use that contact to find the address details of four EBI guards who may have had to be threatened or taken hostage for that outbreak attempt.
It cannot be established whether the address details of the EBI employees were actually queried in 2021, because the tax authorities’ log system does not keep track of this.
A gold mine for criminals pg. 10-13