Covid-19: up to five years closed for partial unemployment fraud in Marseille

Europe 1 with AFP 9:12 p.m., November 16, 2021

Two people and a company were sentenced on Monday by the Marseille Criminal Court to terms of up to five years in prison for improperly receiving state aid related to Covid-19 with false declarations of short-time working .

A first defendant was sentenced to five years in prison with continued detention and a ban from exercising a commercial or industrial profession and from directing, administering, managing or controlling a company, said Tuesday in a statement. Attorney for the Republic of Marseille Dominique Laurens.

Thousands of euros in fines

The defendant had been indicted and imprisoned in a judicial investigation opened on October 6, 2020 for facts of "fraud and money laundering in an organized gang" to the prejudice of the State. A second person was sentenced to a six-month firm sentence, placed in house arrest with electronic surveillance, and a fine of 5,000 euros.

The 6th chamber of the court also sentenced a company, a legal person, to a fine of 60,000 euros and ordered the confiscation of 130,000 euros and a vehicle which had been the subject of criminal seizures.

The fraud with false declarations of short-time working had allowed the three defendants to embezzle several hundred thousand euros which had then been transferred to be laundered on accounts in France, Germany, Belgium and Morocco.

In total, scams amounting to several million euros

The investigation was carried out by the Marseille research section under the direction of the prosecution and in coordination with the services of Tracfin (Intelligence processing and action against clandestine financial circuits), the anti-money laundering unit of the Ministry of the Economy.

Collaboration with the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office enabled the emergency seizure of funds present in a Belgian bank account.

In its press release, the Marseille prosecutor's office recalls that "the exceptional support measure for the economy" put in place by the State in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the various containment measures since 2020 "has benefited crime financial opportunist generating a high number of scams to the detriment of public finances, amounting to several million euros ".