The IRS has issued a rare apology to billionaire investor Ken Griffin for releasing his tax information to the press, as well as to other taxpayers whose information was compromised, the tax agency said in a statement Tuesday.
“The Internal Revenue Service sincerely apologizes to Mr. 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 sentenced earlier this year to five years in prison for unauthorized disclosure of tax returns. Littlejohn had provided tax return information for Griffin and other wealthy Americans to the nonprofit news organization ProPublica.
In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, Griffin said, “I am grateful to my team for securing an outcome that will better protect American taxpayers and ultimately benefit all Americans.”
Starting in 2021, ProPublica published a series called “The Secret IRS Files,” which contained the details of tax returns for thousands of wealthy taxpayers, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk. The reporting examined how some of the wealthiest Americans are minimizing their taxes.
Littlejohn “violated the terms of his contract and betrayed the trust the American people place in the IRS to protect their sensitive information,” the agency said in Tuesday’s statement. “The IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and recognizes that it failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohn’s criminal conduct and the unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffin’s confidential information.”
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Griffin, the founder of the hedge fund Citadel, is worth nearly $42 billion, making him the 34th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The IRS apology comes after Griffin on Monday dropped a lawsuit against the agency and the U.S. Treasury Department that he filed in December over the breach.
ProPublica did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The IRS said it has made “substantial investments in its data security to strengthen the protection of tax information.”
It added: “The agency believes its actions and the resolution of this matter will result in a stronger and more reliable process for protecting the personal information of all taxpayers.”
