An acquittal by a criminal court may have consequences for administrative enforcement. This follows from the ruling of the Central Appeals Tribunal of 1 December 2020. The Tribunal revoked the withdrawal and recovery of social assistance due to an unreported joint household in the light of an earlier acquittal by the criminal court of the intentional failure to provide the necessary information about this joint household. According to the Tribunal, there is a sufficient link between the criminal and administrative proceedings. Moreover, the evidence on which the administrative authority based its sanctions is essentially the same as the evidence on which the criminal court based its acquittal. This means that the Tribunal sees no possibility to follow the administrative authority’s view without violating the presumption of innocence of article 6, paragraph 2 of the ECHR.
The full blog post is written in Dutch.
Date: 18 February 2021
ECLI: ECLI:NL:CRVB:2020:3016
Author: Christien Saris