Data leak at Dutch Tax Office; Finance Sec. pressing charges

An investigation into the Tax Authorities' practices in handling confidential information revealed ten cases of "unauthorized data exchange", State Secretary Eric Wiebes of Finances informed parliament in a letter. In one case, the State Secretary pressed charges with the Public Prosecutor, he wrote.

The investigation in the Data & Analytics department is still ongoing, but Wiebes thought it best to inform the Tweede Kamer of the preliminary findings. All ten cases were reported to the Personal Data Authority, and the persons affected, as specified in the Personal Data Protection Act.

Nine of the cases involved work-related infractions. For example, employees emailed data to private email addresses so that they could wor from home, a spokesperson for the Finance Ministry explained to RTL. While these cases involve unauthorized data exchanges, they aren't considered serious. The employees involved will face integrity investigations.

The tenth case was reported to the Public Prosecutor. This case involved "a targeted selection of people with personal information about them", Wiebes informed the Tweede Kamer. External employees leaked this information via an email. RTL asked the Finance spokesperson whether this data was deliberately leaked. "We don't press charges for nothing", the spokesperson responded.