The IRS has issued an unusual apology for releasing billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s tax records to the media and to other taxpayers whose information was leaked, the tax agency said. statement on tuesday.
“The Internal Revenue Service sincerely apologizes to Kenneth Griffin and the thousands of other Americans whose personal information was leaked to the press,” the IRS said.
The apology stems from the case of a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn, who was convicted earlier this year. Five years imprisonment Littlejohn had provided tax return information for Griffin and other wealthy Americans to the nonprofit news organization ProPublica.
“I thank my team for securing an outcome that better protects the American taxpayer and ultimately benefits all Americans,” Griffin said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.
Starting in 2021, ProPublica will beSecret IRS files” included tax return details for thousands of wealthy taxpayers, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk. The report explored how some of the wealthiest Americans minimize their taxes.
Littlejohn “violated the terms of his contract and betrayed the trust the public places in the IRS to safeguard their confidential information,” the IRS said in a statement on Tuesday. “The IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and acknowledges that it failed to prevent Littlejohn’s criminal conduct and Griffin’s unlawful disclosure of confidential data.”
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Griffin, founder of the hedge fund Citadel, has a net worth of nearly $42 billion, making him the 34th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.The IRS apology came after Griffin on Monday dropped a lawsuit he filed in December against the IRS and the U.S. Treasury Department over the leak.
“As we have reported from day one of this series, we do not know the source of this trove of IRS files,” a ProPublica spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch. “After careful consideration, ProPublica published select tax details of some of the wealthiest Americans to spur debate about the fairness of the U.S. tax system. These stories are clearly in the public interest.”
The IRS said it has made “significant investments in data security to better protect taxpayer information.”
“The agency is confident that this action and the resolution of this case will result in stronger, more reliable processes for protecting the personal information of all taxpayers,” it added.
