The Butcher as Gatekeeper: Why the Government Itself Decides Whether the Data Vault Gets Prosecuted

Summary

On 26 August 2026, affected parents and entrepreneurs filed a criminal complaint against officials of the Finance Ministry, the Tax and Customs Administration and the Benefits Service. They suspect those officials of withholding and embezzling evidence from not one but two hidden data vaults. Their lawyer Merijn van Leeuwen, who represents hundreds of victims, calls it a possible official offence.

The cabinet’s response: no complaint. State Secretary Eerenberg of Finance called filing charges against his own officials “an exceptionally heavy instrument” and said he has no reasonable suspicion of intent. Instead of the Rijksrecherche (the National Criminal Investigation Service) or the Public Prosecution Service, the Tax and Customs Administration first gets more investigation of itself: a follow-up study by accounting firm BDO, hired by the ministry, and a committee under former MP Senna Maatoug that will start “unpacking” the vault from 1 October.

This investigation documents three things. It maps the cabinet members who control this construction, including their previous positions, and shows how the investigation chain keeps looping back to the same ministers, departments and personal networks. It untangles why the choice for internal investigation is not an innocent choice, legally or constitutionally. And it adds up how many citizens were hit by the systems whose evidence sits in the vault: the benefits scandal, FSV, the Risk Analysis Model, the nationality registration and the documents never delivered to the parliamentary inquiry. That comes to hundreds of thousands of people. No research exists on the overlap between those groups.

One image holds it together. In the recovery operation for the benefits scandal, the Finance Ministry stayed at the helm: the same organisation that caused the damage assesses it and pays it out. The data vault gets exactly the same treatment. The organisation that kept the vault out of view for years investigates itself, then decides for itself whether there is grounds for criminal prosecution. The butcher does not merely inspect his own meat. The butcher also decides for himself whether there is any reason to let an inspector in.

This is the follow-up to The corrupt agenda: a reconstruction.

State of play: two data vaults, zero complaints

The facts have settled by now, and they are worse than the cabinet admitted in April 2026.

The Tax and Customs Administration kept over 64 million files in a shielded digital environment, set up in 2019 as a temporary GDPR measure. Documents from that vault should have been supplied to the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Fraud Policy and Public Service Delivery (PEFD) and to later investigations. That never happened. In July 2025 it became clear within the organisation that PEFD-relevant material from the vault had been withheld. The State Secretary for Benefits Recovery was informed by telephone in the week of 21 July 2025. Parliament only heard about it in April 2026. And by now a second data vault has surfaced, which according to the victims’ complaint may also contain evidence.

The claim that the vault “somehow disappeared from view”, as the official reading goes, has also been debunked by the Tax and Customs Administration’s own timeline. The earlier OpenBrief investigation The Corrupt Agenda of the Data Vault documented that between 2020 and 2025 the vault was discussed time and again at director level: the data coordinators’ meeting on cleaning and a new fill round in November 2020, the transfer from the data domain to operations in July 2021, the ownership memo in March 2022, the list of file extensions for the PEFD search shared with the directors’ meeting, the director of BPZ, the director of IV&D, the deputy CISO and the deputy director-general in October 2022, CFD’s inventory questions in August 2023, and the pilot that manually deleted files from the vault in the first quarter of 2024. An environment that passes through the entire directorate is not forgotten. The full timeline is in the earlier investigation.

During the 10 September 2026 debate, MPs across the spectrum demanded independent assessment. Jimmy Dijk (SP) wanted an investigation by the Rijksrecherche into possible official offences. Moinat (Van Haga Group) demanded through motion 1562 that the cabinet “immediately file a complaint” about suspected criminal offences. Mulder (PVV) pointed out that withholding information from inquiry committees violates the Constitution and the Parliamentary Inquiry Act. Motion 1556 by Ergin, Dijk and Vermeer asked for investigation of criminal offences generally. Eerenberg advised against all of them. The vote is scheduled for 22 September 2026.

What Eerenberg offered in defence needs no translation. From the plenary record and the press:

“Filing a complaint is a heavy instrument. Officials are employees who may also expect the utmost care. I have no ‘reasonable suspicion’ of intent in hand. That is the benchmark for the step towards criminal prosecution.”

And Palmen, who unlike Eerenberg was already State Secretary when the vault surfaced and who said nothing to parliament for months:

“I unconsciously failed to keep asking about the data vault. I dropped the ball and I hold that against myself.”

She offered her apologies. Apologies are not an investigation.

Is there a legal basis for months of silence?

No. No legal ground exists for that. What does exist is a set of obligations demanding the opposite. The cabinet invoked the administrative convention of “first create internal clarity, then inform parliament”, but a convention is not a law, and in this file that convention collides head-on with what the law and parliament itself have imposed.

One more precision matters for accountability. The silence began in July 2025 under State Secretary Palmen, who had already been informed by telephone and then “unconsciously failed to keep asking”. Eerenberg only took office on 23 February 2026. The start of the concealment cannot be held against him; what can is that he continued the line for another two months after taking office, co-signed the 15 April letter, and has defended the refusal to file a complaint ever since. Palmen was State Secretary throughout.

Then the “data chaos”. No law prescribes that an archive of 64 million files plus a second, uninspected vault is only reported to parliament after months of internal preliminary investigation, only to then be steered towards destruction through indexing. There is, however, a judicial standard commanding the opposite: in the FSV case the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State ruled (ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:226) that data must be preserved as long as otherwise the ability to reconstruct a system’s scope and workings would be lost. Precisely that danger exists here. Destruction or uncontrolled “clean-up” before independent investigation makes reconstruction impossible and harms the victims’ evidentiary position while their complaint sits with the Public Prosecution Service. In short: there is no basis for the silence, and none for the data swamp that followed.

Who guards the henhouse? The cabinet mapped

Since 23 February 2026 the Jetten cabinet has governed the country: a minority cabinet of D66, VVD and CDA, with eighteen ministers and ten state secretaries, dependent on tolerated support in the House. A remarkably small group at the top of Finance, Justice and the surrounding network controls the data vault, the recovery operation and the question of criminal investigation.

The chain around the data vault

Three observations impose themselves, and none of them is about intent.

Look first at the revolving door, because it revolves inside a single department. Vijlbrief was State Secretary of Finance in the period when the vault was set up in 2019 and “forgotten” in 2020-2021; he is now a minister in the same cabinet that decides whether that period gets criminally investigated. Heinen has held the post since July 2024 and straddled two cabinets. Palmen manages the victims’ recovery and had to answer in the debate for months of silence. Eerenberg, only in place since February 2026, inherits the file and within half a year concludes there is no reasonable suspicion of intent. Whoever should perform the independent check keeps sitting inside the organisation under investigation.

Then the matter nobody expected: the intended overseer of the Tax and Customs Administration lied on her CV. Nathalie van Berkel, the D66 candidate for the post Eerenberg ultimately got, claimed a master’s in public administration at Leiden University; in reality she followed that programme at university-of-applied-sciences level. She withdrew on 16 February 2026. It says something about the appointment pressure on precisely this post, and it explains how Eerenberg, an alderman with no fiscal or administrative experience with the Tax and Customs Administration, became responsible overnight for the organisation whose history is being dug up again.

And then the third observation, the most sensitive one, which is therefore presented here as context and not as accusation: committee chair Maatoug was alderman in Utrecht from December 2024 to spring 2026. Eerenberg was her colleague in the college of mayor and aldermen there until 23 February 2026. During the period when the vault slowly surfaced, they sat in the same college for roughly fourteen months. Maatoug did fine work as an inquiry committee member and her appointment is not in itself proof of influence. But in a file whose key word is “independence”, this personal chain deserves mention. An entirely outside chair was not among the options.

The full Jetten cabinet

For completeness, and because every cabinet member shares responsibility for the cabinet’s position on the complaint, here is the full government. Members touched by this file are marked in bold.

The pattern: sitting and former officials of Finance and Justice move between posts throughout the cabinet while continuing to manage the same file. Nobody in this table stands outside the chain that is supposed to be investigated.

Why no Rijksrecherche, why no Public Prosecution Service?

The refusal deserves serious treatment, because it sounds like legal caution while in fact it shifts a question of power.

Eerenberg’s argument comes down to three steps. A complaint against one’s own officials is a heavy instrument. There is no reasonable suspicion of deliberate withholding. And until there is, further administrative investigation (first BDO, then the Maatoug committee) is the right route.

The problem lies in who performs that test. The reasonable suspicion Eerenberg speaks of must, according to him, emerge from investigations that Finance itself commissions, with Finance as client, into events inside Finance. That creates a closed circle, described in the previous OpenBrief investigation and now in operation:

no complaint, so no independent criminal investigation, so no independently established suspicion, so no ground for a complaint.

The circle is no longer theory. As of September 2026 it is the official policy of the government.

What BDO and the Maatoug committee cannot do

It helps to be precise about what the chosen instruments legally are.

BDO is an accounting and advisory firm, hired by the ministry. BDO has no investigative powers: no stop-and-search, no seizure, no order to produce, no examination under oath, no power to compel witnesses. Officials who refuse to cooperate cannot be forced by BDO. The report lands with the client, which is the organisation that should itself be in the dock. BDO did already conclude in July 2026 that the 64 million files were wrongfully withheld and that the official reading of an “accidental rediscovery” is false, but the firm could not establish whether internal questions about the PEFD search were answered or deliberately ignored. That last question is precisely the criminal one.

The Maatoug committee is an administrative committee, with no statutory investigative basis beyond the cabinet’s commission. It observes the assessment of files and advises on disclosure, but it equally cannot compel witnesses, take sworn testimony or prepare prosecution. Chair Maatoug assembles her own committee, Eerenberg said in the debate, because it must “operate independently”. JA21 MP Ceulemans’ question about its composition went unanswered.

The Rijksrecherche and the Public Prosecution Service are not comparable. The Rijksrecherche independently investigates crimes by government officials, including official offences, with all powers of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Public Prosecution Service decides independently on prosecution and does not fall under the State Secretary of Finance but under the Minister of Justice and Security, who in this cabinet likewise refuses to take the step. The material is ready in criminal law: article 361 of the Criminal Code (an official who deliberately removes, destroys or renders unusable evidentiary documents), article 192a (knowingly withholding documents lawfully requested), and the broader concept of an official offence that lawyer Van Leeuwen uses in the complaint. Whether those offences were committed, nobody knows. That is exactly why independent investigation exists: to establish it, not to presume it.

The inversion: citizens doing what the state refuses

On 26 August 2026 the victims, united in two foundations and assisted by Van Leeuwen, filed the complaint themselves. Hundreds of parents, and small business owners who suspect information about their bankruptcies was withheld in the vaults. In a constitutional state, enforcing the law is the core task of the government. Here the positions are reversed: the victims must get the investigation started against the organisation that originally harmed them and then kept their files in a vault for years.

There is an international mirror, and it is unflattering. In the United Kingdom, the Windrush scandal led to the responsible minister’s resignation and an independent investigation with referral of criminal matters to the prosecution service. In Australia, the 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt scheme held individuals to account and referred a former minister to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In the Netherlands, the Rutte III cabinet fell collectively over the benefits scandal, but no criminal referral followed. The data vault repeats the pattern: administrative apologies, internal investigation, no independent law enforcement.

The victims in numbers

The data vault is not an archiving problem. It is about evidence of systems that the state itself, in enforcement, case law and parliamentary inquiry, has had to declare unlawful. The scale is almost always quoted per system, and therefore systematically underestimated. Hence the known numbers side by side, with sources.

Counting here is method, not rhetoric. Even the most conservative reading, only the benefits scandal, FSV and the nationality registration together, concerns more than a quarter of a million citizens harmed by Finance’s systems. Add the RAM estimate and it may approach half a million. Nobody knows the overlap. There has never been anyone allowed to investigate it. The evidence that could clarify it sits in a vault whose owner decides whether justice gets to look inside.

What the law says, briefly

The legal lower bound is no longer a matter of opinion. The Dutch state has no general power to collect, link and repurpose data about citizens without limit. A chain of requirements applies: legal basis, purpose limitation, necessity, proportionality, data minimisation, accuracy, transparency, security, restricted access, retention period, auditability, legal protection. For the nationality processing, the Dutch Data Protection Authority explicitly established that the Minister of Finance was the data controller: not “the Tax and Customs Administration” as an abstraction, but the department that now also steers the investigation into itself.

The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Fraud Policy and Public Service Delivery titled its final report “Blind to Human and Law” and concluded that in a hardened political climate the three branches of government were blind to people and law, that fundamental rights were violated, and that people who made a mistake were treated as fraudsters. That is not an activist statement. It is the official conclusion of a majority of the House of Representatives itself. On 4 July 2019 State Secretary Snel had already acknowledged that tens of thousands of parents had wrongly been labelled fraudsters. “We came out of that tunnel,” he said. In January 2021 the Rutte III cabinet offered its collective resignation. Political responsibility was accepted. Prosecution never came, at every opportunity again.

Seen over a longer term, there is also the danger lawyers call function creep. A database for taxation gets used for fraud control, then for risk selection, then for investigation, and eventually for automated risk scores of citizens suspected of nothing. Each step sounds manageable on its own. Together they form a permanent government profile of the citizen. The data vault is the physical embodiment of that development: an archive holding some twenty years of profiling upright, out of sight of parliament and courts.

The lawsuits the state has already lost

The victims need not speculate about the limits of the law. Those limits are fixed in judgments, national and European. Below are the cases carrying this file.

One nuance belongs here, or this dossier would paint the state too black and white. From the Supreme Court line it does not follow that every tax assessment collapses whenever a GDPR error occurs somewhere. The judicial line is more precise: the processing may be unlawful while the audit stands, unless the selection itself rests on a constitutionally forbidden criterion. That distinction is exactly why access to selection data, and thus to the data vault, matters so much to victims. This is not an archiving matter. It is evidentiary position.

The butcher checks his own meat

Now the structure itself. In the recovery operation for the benefits scandal, the Finance Ministry stayed at the helm: the same organisation that caused the damage assesses which damage is recognised, calculates the compensation and pays it out. Victims must submit their story to the government that harmed them. That is not a matter of a few bad decisions but of the design itself, and that design was never demolished.

The data vault now gets exactly the same construction. The organisation that kept the vault outside every investigation for years is granted by the political leadership the right to first find out itself what happened, then to assess itself whether a reasonable suspicion of intent exists, and only then, perhaps, to involve the Public Prosecution Service. Every step in that sequence is controlled by the same chain: Finance, the Tax and Customs Administration, and officials whose predecessors, colleagues and own civil servants play the lead in the file.

The butcher comparison fits, provided you use it precisely. The charge is not that individual officials consciously protect themselves; that is unproven and this investigation does not claim it. The charge is institutional. An organisation cannot independently establish whether its own people committed a criminal offence when that same organisation decides whether the case reaches the courts. The history of this file, from FSV through RAM and CAF to the benefits scandal and the data vault, is a chain of moments where that same reflex showed itself: first deny, then internalise, then administrative investigation, then the statute of limitations of public outrage.

That is why the question being voted on 22 September 2026 in the House of Representatives is bigger than a motion about a complaint. The question is whether parliamentary democracy still has an instrument the executive branch did not design itself.

What independent investigation must establish at minimum

Taken over and condensed from the earlier OpenBrief working document. An independent investigation (by the Rijksrecherche, the Public Prosecution Service or a judicial commission with coercive powers) should at minimum answer:

Questions 9 and 10 cannot be answered by the organisation they concern. That is not a position but a principle: nobody is judge in their own case, and certainly not in their own criminal case.

What this investigation claims, and what it does not

Established and documented: the data vault exists, contains at least 64 million files, was kept outside investigations for years, was repeatedly discussed internally from 2020 onward, produced internal signals about PEFD material in 2025, was only reported to parliament in April 2026, has since been joined by a second vault, and the cabinet refuses to file a complaint while the victims have done so themselves. The officials taking these decisions are named in this investigation with role and record. The victim counts are drawn from official sources and court rulings.

Not claimed, because the evidence is lacking: that Eerenberg or Palmen personally withheld documents, that officials are consciously evading criminal prosecution, that the Maatoug committee is by definition biased, that a proven cover-up exists, or that a specific criminal offence was committed by a specific official. This investigation asks for the instruments that can answer those questions: an independent law-enforcement body and public evidence. That the cabinet rejects those instruments is a finding in itself.

The butcher checks his own meat. The butcher has also just decided that no inspector is needed. On 22 September 2026 parliament decides whether to accept that.

Frequently asked questions about the data vault

What is the Tax and Customs Administration’s data vault?

A shielded digital storage environment set up in 2019 as a temporary GDPR measure, because file clean-up and destruction were behind schedule. The vault contains at least 64 million files. Documents from it were never supplied to the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Fraud Policy and Public Service Delivery (PEFD) or later investigations. A second vault has since surfaced, according to the complaint filed by victims on 26 August 2026.

Why won’t the cabinet file a criminal complaint?

State Secretary Eerenberg (Finance) called filing charges against his own officials “an exceptionally heavy instrument” and said there is no reasonable suspicion of deliberate withholding. The cabinet is first commissioning further research by accounting firm BDO and the Maatoug committee (from 1 October 2026). MPs are asking for assessment by the Public Prosecution Service or the Rijksrecherche instead. The motions (1556, 1562, 1563) are put to the vote on 22 September 2026.

Who is responsible for the data vault?

The political chain runs from State Secretary Menno Snel (2017-2019, who signed the first letter about the vault) through Hans Vijlbrief (2020-2022) to Minister Eelco Heinen and State Secretaries Eelco Eerenberg and Sandra Palmen-Schlangen (2024-present). The full matrix with careers and current positions is in Who knew what about the data vault.

How many victims were hit by these systems?

At least 26,000 families in the benefits scandal (estimates up to 35,000 parents), 2,090 children placed out of home according to Statistics Netherlands (2015 to mid-2022), roughly 950 victims abroad, 180,000 to 290,000 citizens registered in FSV, and an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 SME owners profiled by RAM. No research exists on the overlap.

Which criminal law provisions are at stake?

MPs and the victims’ complaint cite article 361 of the Dutch Criminal Code (an official who deliberately removes, destroys or renders unusable evidentiary documents), article 192a (knowingly withholding lawfully requested documents) and the broader concept of an official offence. Whether any of this happened is not established; independent investigation is needed for that.

Read also

• The Corrupt Agenda of the Data Vault — the full timeline of director-level discussions, 2019-2026
• The discovery of 64 million files — the discovery and the nine-month delay
• Credibility of the Dutch Rule of Law — the bigger picture
• RAM never disappeared: the state profiles on — where the profiling began

Sources

• House of Representatives, plenary debate data vault 10 September 2026: https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/plenaire_verslagen/detail/2025-2026/96
• House of Representatives, Parliament in Brief, data vault: https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/plenaire_verslagen/kamer_in_het_kort/datakluis-van-de-belastingdienst
• Letter 15 April 2026 (2026D17991): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?did=2026D17991&id=2026D17991
• Letter 22 May 2026 (2026D24511): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?did=2026D24511&id=2026Z10806
• Letter 10 July 2026 (2026D36494): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?did=2026D36494&id=2026D36494
• Official timeline data vault (2026D24512): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/downloads/document?id=2026D24512
• Questions Jimmy Dijk on BDO (2026D37392): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/kamervragen/detail?did=2026D37392&id=2026Z16477
• Questions Omtzigt on destruction, 2020 (2020D37892): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/kamervragen/detail?did=2020D37892&id=2020Z15232
• Hotspot archive motion, 10 November 2020 (2020D45160): https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/moties/detail?did=2020D45160&id=2020Z21118
• NOS, victims file complaint over data vault: https://nos.nl/artikel/2630168
• NOS, cabinet declines complaint: https://nos.nl/artikel/2630466
• NOS, cabinet regrets late informing of parliament: https://nos.nl/artikel/2627425
• Trouw, victims demand Rijksrecherche investigation: https://www.trouw.nl/politiek/gedupeerde-toeslagenouders-eisen-een-onderzoek-van-de-rijksrecherche-naar-verborgen-datakluizen~bb52c3aa/
• Volkskrant, Eerenberg protects officials: https://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/ook-staatssecretaris-eerenberg-beschermt-ambtenaren-die-tweede-kamer-informatie-onthielden~bb2fe48c/
• Volkskrant, Eerenberg replaces Van Berkel: https://www.volkskrant.nl/politiek/utrechtse-wethouder-eerenberg-vervangt-van-berkel-als-kandidaat-staatssecretaris-financien~b3d73b1b/
• AD, Van Berkel CV controversy: https://www.ad.nl/politiek/d66er-nathalie-van-berkel-geen-staatssecretaris-om-onjuistheden-cv~a9811b70/
• AD Utrecht, Maatoug leads data vault investigation: https://www.ad.nl/utrecht/senna-maatoug-oud-wethouder-in-utrecht-leidt-onderzoek-datakluis-belastingdienst~aa54c800/
• Parlement.com, biography Senna Maatoug: https://www.parlement.com/biografie/s-senna-maatoug
• Parlement.com, biography Sandra Palmen: https://www.parlement.com/biografie/sthph-sandra-palmen
• Government.nl, Eelco Eerenberg: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/regering/bewindspersonen/eelco-eerenberg
• Government.nl, Sandra Palmen-Schlangen: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/regering/bewindspersonen/sandra-palmen-schlangen
• Kabinetsformatie2025.nl, distribution of posts: https://www.kabinetsformatie2025.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/02/05/postenverdeling-kabinet-d66-vvd-cda
• Accountancy Vanmorgen, this is the Jetten cabinet: https://www.accountancyvanmorgen.nl/2026/02/09/dit-is-het-kabinet-jetten-heinen-blijft-op-financien-ex-pwcer-op-buitenlandse-zaken/
• Government.nl, update letter data vault: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/2026/04/15/kamerbriefupdatedatakluis
• Statistics Netherlands, out-of-home placements update: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/maatwerk/2022/48/actualisatie-uithuisplaatsingen-toeslagenaffaire-2015-t-m-juni-2022
• Dutch DPA, fine decision nationality data: https://www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/uploads/imported/boetebesluit_belastingdienst.pdf
• Open Overheid, DPA enforcement nationality data: https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/ronl-71b93874-d34e-488a-9caf-9c455dec34a0/pdf
• Case law, SyRI: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2020:865
• Case law, Project 1043: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2021:1748
• Case law, risk selection access: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:GHARL:2023:3451
• Case law, FSV back-up: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:226
• Case law, FSV rectification: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:908
• Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Fraud Policy and Public Service Delivery: https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerleden_en_commissies/commissies/pefd
• Wetten.overheid.nl, Organisation Decree Ministry of Finance: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0043027
• OpenBrief, The Corrupt Agenda of the Data Vault: https://openbrief.net/en/investigations/corrupt-agenda-data-vault/
• OpenBrief, Data Vault: 64 Million Hidden Files: https://openbrief.net/nl/onderzoeken/datakluis-64-miljoen-bestanden-2026/