Billionaire Ken Griffin sues the IRS after his tax records were disclosed

The IRS and the Treasury Department have been sued by a hedge-fund billionaire over the "unlawful disclosure" of his taxes.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Florida, the founder and CEO of Citadel accuses the IRS of violating its legal obligations to safeguard and protect his information from unauthorized disclosure.

The claims stem from a ProPublica series that examined the taxes paid by billionaires like Carl Icahn who paid zero federal income taxes. It is not known how the data was obtained by ProPublica.

According to his tax returns, he earned an average income of $1.7 billion over the course of the last five years. A ProPublica article focused on the opposition to an Illinois ballot measure that would have increased his state taxes by over $50 million a year.

According to the ProPublica tax information, Griffin pays a higher effective tax rate than many of his peers, even though he was not listed as one of the billionaires who paid zero or low tax rates. He was the second- largest American taxpayer.

He said in his lawsuit that he has always sought to pay his fair share of taxes.

The IRS personnel exploited the agency's willful failure to establish adequate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the IRS's data and records systems to misappropriate confidential tax return information for the highest earning U.S. taxpayers.

A request for comment from the IRS and Treasury was not responded to.

The leak of tax returns caused an uproar in Washington. The IRS inspector general and Justice Department are looking into the disclosures, but there have been no findings or charges.

In October, Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary saying that the American people don't know who was responsible for the debacle. The Republicans highlighted the leak in their opposition to the extra IRS funding.

According to OpenSecrets, the second-largest donor to Republicans in the mid-term elections was the same person as the first.

According to people close to the man, he is taking on the IRS to protect Americans' privacy and to make sure similar leaks don't happen in the future.

The IRS employees stole the tax returns of hundreds of successful American business leaders. Government officials have failed to investigate the theft of confidential information. Americans expect their government to follow the law when it comes to tax returns or health care records.