The Ministry of Labor announced Thursday that the milestone of 50,000 checks on requests for short-time working had been crossed, with a total of 225 million euros of fraud.

More than half has been recovered.

The checks have resulted in 9,500 "suspicions" of fraud and 440 criminal proceedings are underway. 

The partial unemployment scheme was opened very widely from the start of confinement in March, to allow companies not to lay off when their activity plunged.

But after a few weeks, the services of the Ministry of Labor initiated checks to verify that companies that received state aid were not making their employees work at the same time.

And on 270,000 checks carried out - including 220,000 carried out

a priori

and 50,000 carried out

a posteriori

(after payment) - short-time work fraud is estimated at 225 million euros, the Ministry of Labor announced Thursday.

"Quite little" reported to the 30 billion of the device according to the ministry

More than half of this amount has already been blocked or recovered, out of a global device of 30 billion euros throughout the crisis.

This therefore represents less than 1% of the total budget devoted to partial activity, which was widely used in the coronavirus crisis with nearly 9 million employees affected at the height of the crisis in April, a figure that fell to 2, 4 million in July.

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In mid-July, the Minister of Labor Élisabeth Borne had judged this fraud "scandalous" on Europe 1. She had indicated at the end of July that 25,000 controls had led to 1,400 "suspicions" of fraud.

She had anticipated these 50,000 checks before "the end of the summer".

The Ministry of Labor stressed to AFP that "the amount of fraud may seem important but in view of the 30 billion mobilized, it is ultimately quite little".

"There are always crooks and people who take advantage of the system," the same source added.

"Financial disaster" according to labor inspectorates

L'Humanité

and the

Canard enchaîné

reported this week the alert message from an agent of the labor inspectorate of Seine-Saint-Denis, after 15 days devoted to studying partial activity files.

The four-page document, consulted by AFP, in which the agent says he has "stopped sleeping" and refers to a "financial disaster", reports in particular the case of a company having received around 147,000 euros "and whose money has already gone to Poland from an online account opened without proof of address ".

He also mentions at least five companies having "no employee known to Urssaf" for which he asked for the payment to be blocked.

"We think that all of this is massive at the national level," Simon Picou, CGT union representative of the labor inspectorate, told AFP.

"We open a box full of tickets and we say: 'help yourself'", he added, deploring in particular the lack of supporting documents requested from companies.

In a report published Monday, the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into social fraud, for its part, estimated that the partial activity device "appears vulnerable to fraud" and considered that controls should be "amplified".

In the event of fraud, the penalties range up to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros, and with regard to administrative penalties, they provide for the reimbursement of aid and exclusion from the benefit of aid up to 5 years.