Follow the Money: The Billions Balance of the Childcare Benefits Scandal

Summary

The Dutch government has set aside a multi-year budget of EUR 11.7 billion for the recovery operation following the childcare benefits scandal. This investigation breaks that amount into three columns: operational costs, legitimate payouts to citizens, and money that ended up outside the target group.

Of every euro, roughly 30 cents goes to running the operation itself, 55 cents goes to citizens with a recognised claim, and 15 cents leaks into payouts outside the target group. That waste adds up to at least EUR 1.3 to 1.8 billion, with an additional risk of up to EUR 5 billion through the SGH method-Laurentien. Meanwhile, genuine victims are being withheld from supplementary immaterial damage compensation through the wrong legal basis.

The child scheme works like a cash machine: 117,292 child disbursements were paid out automatically, including to children of parents who were ultimately not recognised as victims, and to children with no connection whatsoever to the scandal. Of the 69,659 parents who registered, 37% were not recognised as victims, but their children received disbursements too. Money that is not being recovered. And of the 14 organisations earning from the recovery operation, most are a financial black box. CWS, Radar and OTB do not publish a single staff or contract figure. The recovery operation has become a business model for them.

Methodology: This report is based on publicly available sources: MinFin annual reports 2020-2024, Rijksfinancien.nl budgets and supplementary budgets, Court of Audit report May 2024, UHT dashboard (May 2026), parliamentary documents (Kamerstuk 31066-1254), NOS, NRC and Wikipedia. Amounts marked estimate are calculated from published totals and ratios. Amounts marked published are taken directly from official sources.

Dashboard

The dashboard below shows the full three-column balance: operational costs, legitimate payouts to citizens, and improper or questionable amounts paid out. By year and by entity. The figures are based on the UHT dashboard of 15 May 2026, Ministry of Finance budget figures and the Court of Audit report from 2024.

Key figures

The budget breaks down like this:

• 55% legitimately to citizens (~EUR 6.4 billion)
• 15% waste and improper (~EUR 1.8 billion, excluding SGH risk)
• 30% administration (~EUR 3.5 billion)

“30 percent in administrative costs is certainly not standard in government. On average, less than 5 percent of total government spending goes to administration.” — Jesse van der Geest, Tilburg University (NOS, January 2024)

Column A: Operational costs

The government has spent an estimated EUR 3.5 billion through 2026 running its own recovery apparatus. That is 30% of the total budget, six times the national average for administrative costs.

About 75% of staff are externally hired, on average twice as expensive as permanent employees. The CWS backlog grew to 11,992 applications with only 1,670 advices issued (14%). The organisation costs an estimated EUR 30 to 50 million per year, with zero disclosure.

The budget grew by a factor of 38. What started as EUR 310 million in 2020 stands at EUR 11.7 billion in 2025. The main drivers: far more registrations than expected (69,659 versus an estimated ~30,000), expansion of the target group to include children, ex-partners and HZK victims, complexity of individual files, and EUR 363 million in penalty payments for slow processing.

“The more customisation you apply, the more expensive it gets.” — Maarten Allers, professor of Economics of Decentral Government (NOS, January 2024)

Column B: Legitimate payouts

The legitimate payouts to the 43,988 recognised victim parents and their immediate family amount to an estimated EUR 6.4 billion. This is what the recovery operation was supposed to be.

But even within this “legitimate” column there is a shadow side. The Court of Audit concluded in May 2024 that 13% of the compensation payments in 2023 (EUR 113.5 million out of EUR 862 million) had to be assessed as erroneous or uncertain. Complex files, causality that is hard to establish.

Column C: Waste and improper payments

The third column is where the money leaks. Payouts outside the recognised target group, avoidable penalty payments from failure, opaque flows to organisations that themselves profit from the recovery. The total: EUR 1.3 to 1.8 billion, with an additional risk of up to EUR 5 billion through SGH.

None of these amounts are being recovered. The generosity is written into law. The legislature deliberately chose speed and no recovery. That is legitimate. But it does mean that hundreds of millions of euros were paid to people outside the target group, and nobody is measuring, publishing, or correcting how large that waste actually is.

The child scheme as cash machine

The ministry chose a broad scheme to compensate quickly. A spokesperson: “It is not possible to determine for each child individually whether they directly or indirectly experienced the consequences of the childcare benefits scandal. That would not only take a very long time, but it also does not fit the desire of the children and Parliament to arrive at a quick and generous scheme.”

The figures show the scale. Of the 69,659 parents who registered, 25,671 have now not been recognised as victims (37%). But in the initial phase, their children were also sent disbursements. All 117,292 child disbursements have been paid out and are not being recovered, even if the parent was later not recognised.

The reference date was 26 January 2021. Anyone registered as a benefits partner on that date automatically received money for the children in that administration. Including stepchildren, children of ex-partners, and children with no direct connection to the scandal.

A victim mother, Sarah, put the contrast plainly:

“We have to prove everything, send letters and dig up papers from years ago. But children who don’t even know a childcare benefits scandal exists just get 10,000 euros deposited into their account.”

In a case documented by NOS, an ex-husband of a victim received EUR 28,000 for three children. Children who never lived with the victim. This is not an exception. It is the built-in logic of the reference date system.

The staffing costs black box

Of the 14 organisations earning from the recovery operation, only a handful publish financial information.

Of the 14 identified entities, only 3 publish specific staffing or contract amounts (UHT partially, municipalities, SGH total budget). The remaining 11 are a black box. CWS, Radar and OTB have published no staffing or contract figures whatsoever. This while the CWS backlog of 11,992 applications and only 1,670 advices (14%) implies substantial ongoing costs.

A WOO (open government) request to the Ministry of Finance is the only route to unlock these figures.

OTB and Radar: an unnecessary parallel structure

The Support Team for Benefits Abroad (OTB) was outsourced to Radar Adviesgroep in June 2022 for victims in approximately 34 countries. It concerns a few thousand families. This target group could easily have been placed with an RNI municipality (National Office for Identity Data non-residents) or UHT itself. Both have the infrastructure for non-resident persons. Instead, a separate, non-transparent organisation was created.

The consequences for victims abroad are concrete. They always have to call a non-free number, from abroad, which means the victims themselves bear the international call charges to chase their own recovery. The OTB itself has no phone number that victims can use to reach the organisation directly. The only route is through the general UHT number, which refers them on.

Foreign victims keep falling behind structurally. At Radar, the case manager changed five times in a single case, without any handover. The waiting time reached 550 days. There was a GDPR breach in which personal data was shared without legal basis.

That Radar Adviesgroep and OTB then also publish no contract amounts at all completes the picture. An organisation that cannot be reached by the people it is supposed to help. Paid with public money of which the amount is unknown. For a task that existing government agencies could also have carried out.

The one-euro doctrine

While the state pays out billions, the recovery operation fails individual victims fundamentally. The UHT has now paid EUR 363 million in penalty payments because it did not decide within statutory deadlines. The EUR 59 million total documented by Trouw is now outdated. The real figure is much higher.

Lawyer Narda Teke-Bozkurt went to court four times for a mother from Zwolle who waited 3.5 years for decisions. The judge ultimately imposed a penalty of one euro per day, capped at one euro. Teke-Bozkurt: “This flushes citizens’ legal protection down the toilet.”

Administrative law lecturer Rens Koenraad (Tilburg Law School): “Such a one-euro doctrine undermines the authority of judicial rulings.”

The double standard

The most painful paradox of this investigation is not what goes out to people who suffered no harm. It is what is being withheld from the people who did.

Victims who received the EUR 30,000 Catshuis scheme and subsequently went through the integral assessment (IA) or CWS route must offset that amount against their final compensation. That is logical in itself: double compensation for the same damage does not fit. But the Ministry of Finance applies the wrong legal basis. The result: supplementary immaterial damage compensation to recognised victims is being withheld.

The wrong legal basis

The offset is based by the Ministry on Article 2.1(3) of the Wht (Dutch Recovery of Childcare Benefits Act), the basis for supplementary compensation for actual damage. But the statutory basis for offsetting is Article 2.1(5) Wht:

“The compensation and the supplementary compensation for actual damage shall be waived insofar as compensation has otherwise been provided for the matter in question, or insofar as the applicant has been granted an O/GS allowance as referred to in Article 49c of the General Act on Income-Dependent Schemes, as it read at the time of the application for the O/GS allowance, or as referred to in Article 2.6.”

The difference is crucial. Article 2.1(5) Wht refers to compensation that has “for the matter in question”, for the same damage, already been granted. The question therefore is: has the immaterial damage calculated in the supplementary compensation already been compensated in the integral assessment?

Two types of immaterial damage

The answer is no. The Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State confirmed this on 2 July 2025. In para. 9.4, the Division held:

“The explanatory memorandum to the Wht states on the point at issue that the amount for immaterial damage is a flat-rate compensation for the presumed stress, inconvenience and uncertainty with which victims were confronted in the period elapsed from the date of the first decision to recover, refuse or discontinue (the advance on) childcare allowance, up to the date of the first decision in which compensation is granted.”

The EUR 500 per half-year from the integral assessment (Article 2.1(1) Wht) therefore specifically covers the presumed stress, inconvenience and uncertainty in the period between the first wrongful decision and the first compensation decision. In para. 9.5, the Division makes explicit that this concerns a different type of immaterial damage from that in the supplementary compensation:

“The legislature took into account that a victim also suffered other immaterial damage than the presumed stress, inconvenience and uncertainty to which this flat-rate amount of EUR 500.00 relates. The legislature chose to allow the Benefits Service to grant supplementary compensation for actual immaterial damage for this other immaterial damage.”

The conclusion is fixed: the immaterial damage compensation in the supplementary compensation (Article 2.1(3) Wht) is not the same damage as the flat rate in the integral assessment (Article 2.1(1) Wht). There is therefore no prior compensation “for the matter in question”. The offset on this item is legally incorrect.

The contrast table

The state distributes hundreds of millions to people outside the target group and refuses to recover it. “Recovery would create a new childcare-benefits-scandal-like situation.” But for actual victims, a supplementary immaterial damage compensation is being withheld that the Administrative Jurisdiction Division explicitly classified as a separate category. The generosity stops where the victims begin.

What these figures say

EUR 6.4 billion has gone to citizens who suffered harm from unlawful government action. That is not nothing.

But EUR 3.5 billion has also gone to the bureaucracy that has to carry out the recovery. 75% externally hired staff, twice as expensive. Fourteen organisations live off this operation, and eleven of them do not publish what they earn.

And the waste is entirely uncontrolled. The law allows generosity, and that is a deliberate choice by the legislature. But there is no visibility on how much money ends up outside the target group. No monitoring, no publication of improper payments, no correction. While victims like Sarah spend years writing letters and producing evidence, children who have never heard of the scandal receive money automatically. And while hundreds of millions go to non-victims, recognised victims are having supplementary immaterial damage compensation withheld through the wrong legal basis.

Who is supervising a recovery operation in which the overseeing bodies are themselves the beneficiaries?

Looking ahead

In the next investigation we will dig deeper into the SGH method-Laurentien and the hidden risk of EUR 5 billion. The secret MinFin memo from May 2024 warned that the looser causality of the SGH route could significantly increase total recovery costs. Parliament chose to proceed anyway. The evaluation is still ongoing.

We will also investigate the civil liability of the recovery organisations themselves. Radar refuses to classify itself as an administrative body, while the organisation is fully government-funded. The civil courts remain the only route for full compensation. But the Legal Aid Council refused victims funded legal aid.

Sources

Official documents

• UHT dashboard, herstel.toeslagen.nl, status 15 May 2026 (43,988 recognised, 25,671 unrecognised, 117,292 child disbursements, 1,670 CWS advices)
• Ministry of Finance, recovery operation budget 2025, EUR 11.7 billion multi-year
• Netherlands Court of Audit, “Investigation into the implementation of the childcare benefits recovery operation”, May 2024 (13% erroneous/uncertain, EUR 113.5m of EUR 862m)
• Spring Memorandum 2025, UHT penalty payments EUR 363m
• Staatsblad 2026, 32, deadline supplementary compensation 1 April 2026
• 22nd Progress Report UHT, 13 February 2026
• Dutch Recovery of Childcare Benefits Act (Wht), Article 2.1(1) (integral assessment, EUR 500/half-year flat rate), Article 2.1(3) (supplementary compensation for actual damage), Article 2.1(5) (basis for offset)
• ABRvS 2 July 2025, paras. 9.4-9.5: immaterial damage in IA (EUR 500 flat rate) concerns “presumed stress, inconvenience and uncertainty”; supplementary compensation concerns “other immaterial damage”; Explanatory Memorandum Wht, Parliamentary Papers II 2021/22, 36 151, no. 3, p. 73

Media

• NOS, “Child scheme childcare benefits scandal: generous and broad”, January 2023, “not possible to determine individually for each child”
• NOS, “Secret MinFin memo: SGH could add +EUR 5bn in extra costs”, May 2024
• NRC, “Number 5 Foundation receives government money via SGH”, November 2024, EUR 240k/yr + EUR 82.5k pass-through
• Trouw, Emiel Hakkenes: “Even after 59 million in penalty payments government still fails to act”, 24 May 2026, “one-euro doctrine”

OpenBrief investigation reports

• CWS Termination: Shift from Actual Damages to Flat-Rate Compensation, 20 February 2026
• Recovery Organisations: Radar, SGH and MijnHerstel, 3 April 2026
• Entrepreneur Damage in the Childcare Benefits Scandal, 10 April 2026
• RAM Never Disappeared: The State Keeps Profiling, 27 May 2026