For the Court of Auditors, they must cross-check their files with the tax authorities. An effective measure ten times postponed.
Theft of bank identity, falsification of bank identity statement (RIB)… Fraud is progressing with the development of online banks. In 2020, the amounts of embezzled transfers thus reached 157 million euros, i.e. a tenfold increase in four years, according to the Banque de France. For fraudsters, social protection organizations – family allowance funds, health insurance funds, pension funds, Pôle emploi, etc. – constitute a target of choice.
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However, social organizations do not fight effectively enough against this type of fraud, alerts the Court of Auditors in an interim summary published on Monday and addressed to Ministers Olivier Véran (Health), Bruno Le Maire (Economy) and Olivier Dussopt (Public Accounts). Enjoining them to bang their fists on the table vis-à-vis their administrations, the Court asks them to achieve ” from this year » the automated cross-checking of the files of social organizations with those of the tax authorities, a project that has been in progress for… more than ten years!
About 4 million euros of diverted transfers were detected in the social sphere in 2020, representing 2.5% of total bank identity fraud. A figure which, however, only concerns identified diversions and “it is likely that real bank identity fraud in the social sphere involves higher amounts “, underlines the Court of Auditors.
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Social protection bodies have taken, often urgently, various measures to combat the risks of diversion. But according to financial magistrates, “they do not sufficiently carry out the simple measure of reconciling the bank details, which they use to make their payments, with the Ficoba file, which lists the bank details of French residents declared by their banks “.
Only the National Fund for Electric and Gas Industries (Cnieg) has made such a reconciliation. With success. Since it systematized these cross-checks, the Cnieg “was able to thwart all hijacking attempts “, notes the Court of Auditors.
Ten successive postponements
Recalling that the automated reconciliation of files has known “ten successive postponements between 2018 and 2021 “, while the measure is “simple” and “commits limited resources“, the financial judges hammer that it is now necessary “lead” and “implement it this year“.
The subject of social fraud – which goes far beyond simple banking identity theft – has been in the news for several months. Denouncing the government’s laxity on this file, several presidential candidates mentioned in their program a potential source of savings, taking up the evaluation of 30 billion euros of social fraud made by the magistrate Charles Prats in his books.Fraud Cartel. An estimate denounced by the administration and the outgoing government but which the Court of Auditors, which is soon to report on the subject, has failed to dismantle…
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