A childcare aid scandal overthrows the Dutch government

The Dutch government was forced to resign entirely over a scandal involving thousands of families wrongly accused of misusing financial aid for childcare.

And the third government headed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced, after a 2.5-hour meeting on Friday, that he would present the resignation of the Cabinet to King Willem Alexander.

This comes after a parliamentary commission of inquiry concluded in a report published in December that at least 9,000 families faced false accusations of misuse of childcare aid and imposed financial fines on some of them.

And many of these families faced severe financial problems as a result of their obligation to return this aid to the state.

The report indicated that the tax authority practiced “witch hunting” based on ethnic discrimination, as dual nationality was one of the criteria for identifying the supposed “fraudsters”.

The report described this behavior as “severe fraud,” stressing that the current and previous governments headed by Rutha bear some responsibility for it, in addition to the judicial and legislative authorities.

Source: NL News