Hundreds of people have been caught abusing social benefits every year as the government steps up its fight against fraud that involves millions of euros falsely claimed in childcare, disability, unemployment and other state support.
A total of 2,243 people were found to be abusing the welfare system between 2018 and 2020, according to data supplied by George Cremona, who heads government investigations into benefit fraud.
The government has saved around €7.3 million in the past three years after the Benefit Fraud Investigation Department suspended payments to those who were found not to be entitled to them.
A further €3 million were recovered after the government ordered abusive benefits be repaid.
Benefit fraud is illegal in terms of the Social Security Act. Those who receive state aid to which they are not entitled normally face an administrative fine and are also made to pay back one-and-a-half times the amount that they received.
Abusers can also face up to one year in prison.
Just last month, an EU-wide study on attitudes towards corruption found that a third of Maltese respondents claimed to have used personal connections to secure access to social benefits.
Cremona told Times of Malta that, over the past few years, the investigations arm within the government’s Income Support and Compliance Division had invested in IT equipment to identify more social benefit abusers.
These abuse detectives have also recently introduced a new prevention mechanism in the fight against state aid leeches.
“All applications for means tested benefits are being scrutinised through information held within the government across different entities,” he said.
The implementation of this new mechanism is meant to prevent payments being made to those not entitled to them.
Cremona did not comment on the form of abuse detected.
However, sources at the investigations department said that among the most common forms of abuse were fraudulent disability and unemployment claims.
“We mostly find people claiming to be unemployed while cashing regular cheques and depositing money in their bank accounts or else quite a few people claiming to be disabled or sick when they aren’t,” a source said.
Despite a means testing system in place, the majority of those abusing the system will have originally been eligible for funds and would simply not inform the authorities that they had either found employment or recovered from illness.
In 2015, Times of Malta reported how one taxpayer had been caught receiving €75,000 in social benefits he was not entitled to.
At the time, the serial abuser was tapping into seven benefits, including different pension schemes, as well as disability and sickness assistance. He later agreed to enter into a payment plan in exchange for not facing criminal proceedings. Meanwhile, Cremona said that cases of detected benefit fraud had remained stable in these last three years.
The restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, had led to a slight reduction in the number of fraud cases uncovered following physical inspections.
However, more cases of abuse had been confirmed through desk work and risk analysis measures recently introduced by the department.