It had already been decided in the summer of 2021 to launch such an investigation. The National Investigation Department has now launched an investigation.
Several people involved in the case have been heard in recent months. The Public Prosecutor also informed the Council of Attorneys General and the Ministry of Justice and Security.
According to News time it concerns an investigation into the former Director General of the Tax and Customs Administration Jaap Uijlenbroek and Manon Leijten, a former civil servant at the Ministry of Finance. The Public Prosecutor does not release any statement about the identity of the people involved.
The two former senior officials allegedly denied before the parliamentary interrogation commission that they were aware of a note dated March 2017. In that note, Sandra Palmen-Schlangen, the then top lawyer of the Tax and Customs Administration, concluded that the service had acted”. reprehensible”. She advised to compensate the parents.
The memo was then withheld and only made public in the autumn of 2020 after questions from Member of Parliament Pieter Omtzigt. This happened shortly before the interrogations by the interrogation commission took place.
During interrogations, Uijlenbroek and Leijten said they were unaware of the existence of the memo before the finance minister made it public. But from a reconstruction of Fidelity in RTL news it turned out that the note had already surfaced at the ministry in 2019. Parts of it were adopted into official documents, but the memo again disappeared into the drawer.
In October 2021 Uijlenbroek denied in a conversation with NU.nl that he was aware of the memo ahead of the parliamentary hearings. Then he was accused of perjury by opposition parties in the House of Representatives.
The investigation is now underway. Uijlenbroek and Leijten leave a comment News time I am not yet aware of the investigation by the National Investigation Department.
