Fraud

As a young employee in the National Audit Office, I got to know colleagues from the FIOD as they moved into our building for an investigation. I remember piles of files and months, sometimes years, of investigations. The alternation between paperwork and interrogations was very important. Findings from both sources were compared, and the results of those comparisons in turn gave rise to further and more focused interrogations.

Later, when I was section coordinator for auditing, I was allowed to join the so-called tripartite consultation, with the Public Prosecution Service and the FIOD, to assess which reported cases were to be prosecuted. Signals about possible criminal offenses came out of the regular inspections and were collected and brought into this consultation for selection.

With a colleague during my time with the State Auditor's Office, I had done a book review at a contracting company. Neat company, excellent reputation in the region. We did find the director and his accountant somewhat tense during the preliminary interview, but there was an unqualified opinion from the accountant and he said there were no material issues requiring attention. A few months after our investigation, I read in the newspaper that the FIOD had raided the contractor's premises with dozens of people and had seized the entire administration. It later turned out that the administrator had felt very uncomfortable with our questions and especially the forced answers he had to give to them, to which he felt compelled to report criminal acts at the company to the FIOD. There was black income with which extras were paid to staff. Not even that high-profile, but the entrepreneur's reputation was ruined.

Fraudster until proven guilty
As exceptional as fraud was then, it is now taken for granted. We also call everything fraud these days. The government has increasingly come to see the citizen or company as a fraudster. I am tempted to say that we are all fraudsters until we are proven wrong. When I am in contact with the IRS, I notice this firsthand. My statements are considered lies until I have substantiated them to the point where there is no other conclusion than that I am telling the truth. In that attitude, tax officials, and I am sincerely sorry to say so, are supported by the courts. In conversations with professional colleagues, we do note that lower courts go very much along with the inspector and that we are glad to have the supreme court, the Supreme Court, which can then take corrective action.

The report of the parliamentary Fraud Inquiry Committee hit me like a bomb. Pieter Omtzigt said he knew it all, but blushed when confronted with the fact that he had stood at the cradle of the Fraud Act. He had contributed to Frans Weekers' departure as State Secretary when the Bulgarians fraud came to light. Weekers couldn't do anything about it, as this had everything to do with the damned Benefits Act. The systematic way in which government departments then went looking for Fraud is in my view very bad for a Western democracy.

But there are apparently more important issues. Pretty soon after committee chairman van Nispen told the people that nothing has changed yet and it could happen again today, it became silent. He who is silent, agrees. I learn from this that we have no intention of listening to the reflection of the committee, which finds both the legislature, the government, the executive agencies and the judiciary more or less guilty. The system is thus accommodated, and citizens and businesses will continue to be victims of this government in large numbers. The newly constituted chamber did not move, therefore the misery will continue for at least another 4 years.