The Public Prosecution Service (OM) has reached settlement agreements with two directors of a Northern Dutch secondment agency, preventing further prosecution. The suspects will pay a sum of 100,000 euros and perform 120 hours of unpaid labor. This concludes a long-running tax fraud investigation.
Temporary workers as interns
The OM and the two suspects agreed on the payment of 100,000 euros and performing 120 hours of unpaid labor per person. The two suspects, a 55-year-old man and a 50-year-old man, were arrested in October 2017 during raids at various locations in Northern Netherlands and Latvia. The investigation started after a tax authority audit and was conducted by the FIOD. The two were suspected, among other things, of recruiting temporary workers in Latvia who were wrongly registered as interns in the payroll administration in the Netherlands.
After their arrest in 2017, the two suspects spent a few months in pre-trial detention. In 2020, the FIOD completed the investigation. In the following years, multiple witnesses were heard by the examining magistrate at the suspects request. Recently, the two suspects and the secondment agency paid 1.1 million euros in taxes including tax interest and collection interest to the Tax Authorities. This has restored legal order regarding the Tax Authorities.
Agreements
This legal restoration, combined with the many years that have passed since the arrests in 2017, was the reason for the OM to reach agreements with the two suspects. Subsequently, the two ongoing criminal cases at the court in Zwolle ended. The two suspects will not receive compensation for the months they spent in pre-trial detention. Prosecution against other suspects in the investigation has also ended.
