Almost 70,000 people registered with the finance ministry as potentially being victims of the childcare benefit scandal, but fewer than half have passed an initial check entitling them to an automatic payment of €30,000, the finance ministry said on Monday.

In total, 68,376 people had come forward before the deadline at the end of last year, although claims which came in on January 1 and 2 have also been accepted, the finance ministry said.

So far, 95% of people putting in a claim have gone through the light check and 33,335 people have passed, and have therefore been officially recognized as victims of the scandal. They will now undergo further checks to establish if they could be entitled to more money.

For more than a decade, the Dutch tax office wrongly accused tens of thousands parents of making fraudulent childcare benefit claims.

Reporting by RTL in 2018 brought the toeslagenaffaire (benefits scandal) to light, revealing that officials assumed families who made minor errors on their paperwork were committing fraud and ordered them to pay back thousands of euros of benefits, sending many into bankruptcy.

Families with dual nationality or a migrant background were specifically targetted.