2500 Ghost Citizens Amsterdam

Amsterdam has identified 2500 ghost citizens during a  2-year investigation of addresses. The investigation of the city also revealed welfare and benefits fraud. This is evident from a coverage on Monday from RTL News.

The municipality compared 58,000 addresses from the municipal administration and addresses of benefits agency UWV. The municipality says that the number of addresses where fraud was determined was rather small, but the fraud amount per address was considerable.

The total amount was not yet calculated. New in the investigation is that all occupants at each address were considered.

Ghost Citizens are people who become untraceable, for example, because they do not register when they move abroad. But also citizens who want to evade or defraud tax register with a  wrong address.

The Labour Party (PvdA) in the House is excited about the Amsterdam approach and wants to implement this nationwide. "A good exchange of data between different administrations is vital."

The party thinks that Interior Affairs Minister Ronald Plasterk, must use the Amsterdam results in an ongoing investigation into the modernization of the municipal personal records database (GBA).