Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government resigned on Friday, accepting responsibility for wrongful accusations of fraud by the tax authorities that drove thousands of families to financial ruin, often on the basis of ethnicity.The cabinet would remain in place for now in a caretaker capacity to manage the coronavirus crisis, Rutte said. He then rode his bike to King Willem-Alexander’s 17th century baroque Huis Ten Bosch palace in The Hague to discuss his resignation.

An election has already been scheduled for March 17 at the end of Rutte’s third term.

“This is about tens of thousands of parents who were crushed under the wheels of the state,” Rutte told journalists. “There can be no doubt, this is a colossal stain.”

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