The Dutch Tax Authority (Belastingdienst) has uncovered a previously overlooked digital data vault containing at least 64 million files that should have been reviewed during parliamentary investigations into the country's child benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire), in which tens of thousands of parents were wrongly labelled as fraudsters when claiming childcare subsidies. The vault was created in 2019 to quarantine files pending privacy-law reviews, but subsequently fell off the agency's radar entirely. State secretaries Eerenberg and Palmen have informed parliament that an independent inquiry has been launched into how this happened, and that the files — currently unsorted and unsearchable — will be processed as a priority, with any relevant material shared with lawmakers as soon as possible.