Five bosses at the tax authority SKAT have lost their jobs as a result of the multi-billion-kroner frauds that recently shook the agency and earlier failures in the implementation of an IT system in 2013 that led to mistakes in the collection of debts from taxpayers.

READ MORE: Tax authorities report multi-billion-kroner fraud

With regard to the fraud case, Jesper Rønnow Simonsen, the head of SKAT, places the blame firmly on management.

“In the fraud case involving dividend tax there was a managerial failure by several bosses and at several levels,” he said.

“The failure was the result of the lack of care in making payments, along with the lack of procedures and focus on audit reports that identified problems in the area. There is talk of an incomprehensibly large amount that was wrongfully paid out. It is an extremely serious case, and therefore yesterday I sent a number of bosses home.”

In the case of the IT system, Simonsen refers to the conclusions of a report by the governmental legal advisor Kammeradvokaten and the IT consultancy Accenture.

“The system wasn’t fully developed and had serious legality problems. The picture I was presented with gave an unrealistic and overly optimistic picture of the system’s readiness and functionality.”