Police detained four people due to fraud in the payment of pandemic aid – SME.sk

BRATISLAVA. Police detained four people on Tuesday morning in connection with pandemic assistance that the state was supposed to send to mailbox companies through the Pezinok employment office. This was stated by the interim police president on the TV show Joj Na hrane Stefan Hamran.

Millions of euros

He did not rule out that other persons would be detained in this case. According to him, the police have indications that an organized group could be behind the case.

According to the findings of the Ján Kuciak Investment Center, the employment office in Pezinok was supposed to pay 24 million euros between June and August this year to suspicious companies that do not have financial statements, it is not clear whether and how many employees they have, and several of them also have tax debts.

The center found that these are 28 mailboxes owned by foreign citizens, mostly from Greece a Croatia. They are also connected by the fact that they all signed a contract on the provision of state First Aid with the Pezinok Labor Office, and finally pandemic aid was paid back to them for the months between October 2020 and May this year.

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“Of course, since the beginning of the First Aid, the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family and the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family have warned applicants that applications and affidavits will be checked on an ongoing basis,” the ministry responded in a joint statement with Labor, Social Affairs and Family. families.

Control mechanisms

They recalled that all applicants for contributions from the First Aid project sign an affidavit confirming the accuracy of the information provided. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry has paid out more than € 2 billion over more than 1.36 million payments, so it is not possible to physically verify the details of each application in advance.

The Center for Labor, Social Affairs and the Family and the Ministry of Labor claim to be aware of possible aid misuse and have set up systemic and internal control mechanisms to identify possible abuses of the crisis aid system.

“Even in the mentioned case, the ministry together with the headquarters checked the possible abuse of the state aid system and immediately acted on it, a criminal complaint was filed and the case was referred to the law enforcement authorities,” they said in a statement.