Elisabeth Borne has been Minister of Labor since July 2020. -

PHILIPPE MAGONI / DICOM / SIPA

Some 500,000 checks carried out since the start of the crisis have made it possible to detect short-time work fraud involving some 200 million euros, but most of these sums have been recovered, Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Wednesday. .

“We are monitoring, of course: it's public money, it's everyone's money.

We are vigilant, so that there is no fraud or scams, ”explained Elisabeth Borne on LCI.

🗣 @jmaphatie on short-time working: "Are there abuses? Are you tracking them?"



🗣 @Elisabeth_Borne: "We are obviously vigilant, there are always international crooks who want to take advantage of it [...] We have made nearly 500,000 checks."



📺 #LaMatinaleLCI.

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- LCI (@LCI) January 27, 2021

“We carried out nearly 500,000 checks.

I can assure you that 70% of the sums which were the subject of suspicion were blocked from the start, and we were able to recover 80% of the money that had been unduly paid, ”added the Minister.

"The orders of magnitude, it is 200 million euros which had been the subject of suspected fraud - in this case we block the payments.

And there must be around twenty million that we have not yet recovered, ”said Elisabeth Borne.

These frauds are in particular the fact of "crooks who wanted to usurp the identity of companies to be able to benefit from partial activity", she explained.

A massive fraud investigation last summer

Last summer, the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation into massive fraud attempts on short-time work, emanating from a network of crooks with international ramifications.

These crooks would have tried to embezzle 182 million euros in total.

But the abuses also include more traditional and smaller-scale frauds, involving companies with a more traditional profile.

In total, nearly nine million employees saw their compensation paid for by the State during the first confinement in spring 2020, then three million during the second confinement in November, recalled Elisabeth Borne.

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