Rent Assessment Committee worker caught embezzling €66,500

An employee of the Rent Assessment Committee committed fraud with refunds of dispute fees for 17 months, RTL Nieuws reports based on an external report and questions to the committee. The employee embezzled a total of 66,500 euros by having refunds made into his own bank accounts. The matter only came to light when the bank noticed the committee was making salary payments and dispute fee repayments into the same account.

The Rent Assessment Committee handles disputes between tenants and landlords, for example, on the height of the rent. The Committee’s rulings are binding to both parties. Anyone who calls in the committee must pay a fee in advance - 25 euros for the tenant and 300 euros for the landlord. If the committee rules in your favor, you get that money back. The employee embezzled those repayments.

The employee worked in the committee’s financial administration. According to RTL, he manually added his own bank account numbers to closed cases due for repayment. The committee only checked whether the amount of repayment was correct and did not control the bank account details. It, therefore, failed to notice the fraud committed from March 2022 to July 2023.

The fraud came to light when the bank noticed that the Rent Assessment Committee paid wages and reimbursements into the same account number. It alerted the committee, which launched an investigation. The fraudster was dismissed and ordered to pay back the stolen amount.

In the report, the Rent Asssessment Committee blamed its failure to catch the fraud on it being a small organization. Employees in the financial department often have multiple tasks. In this case, the accused employee could both create new refunds using his own bank account number and forward the list of refunds for payment, in practice checking himself. The committee said it has taken internal measures to tighten the controls.

Professor Tjerk Budding, who specializes in accountability issues within the government, told RTL that the Rent Assessment Committee has “no excuse whatsoever” for failing to notice this fraud. The committee is by no means a small organization, he said. Its 2022 annual report showed that it has 127 full-time employees, accounting for 16 million euros in personnel costs. “This is certainly not a one-man business. It must provide room for separation of duties,” he said.