Dutch Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten and Secretary of State Fred Teeven have submitted their resignations after admitting to providing parliament with false information over a compensation payment to a drug dealer in 2001, media reported on Tuesday.
The money paid to the trafficker was wrongly confiscated by the state, Opstelten explained, and it turned out that the exact amount was much more than the 4.7 million Dutch guilders ($2.6 million) that the minister had previously reported, according to Efe news agency.
Teeven, the attorney general at the time, authorised the payment, while the minister initially claimed that he was unable to specify the details of the payment, as they had lost any record of the transaction.
On Monday, however, Opstelten presented a receipt for the payment and admitted that it could have been found earlier.
Although the minister admitted to misleading the parliament and took "full responsibility" for what happened, he underlined that the payment was not illegal.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that he could do nothing but accept the resignations, adding that the government was losing two "experienced men", according to a report in De Telegraaf newspaper on Tuesday.
