B up to 3.5 billion furlough project money may have been misappropriated | UK News

The government believes up to $ 3.5 billion could have been paid in false or fraudulent claims for the Farluff project.

H.M. Jim Harra, a top civil servant in revenue and customs, said he calculated that 10% of his employees’ money might have gone to the wrong places.

“We have made an assumption for the purposes of our scheme that the error and fraud rate of this scheme may be between 5% and 10%,” the Permanent Secretary said.

He spoke before members of parliament on the Public Accounts Committee.

According to the latest figures, the government has so far disbursed $ 35.4 billion. That means somewhere between 75 1.75 billion and 3.5 billion could have been misappropriated.

“It will be from deliberate fraud to error,” Harra added.

“What we have said in our risk assessment is that we are not going to try to find employers who have made a serious mistake in compiling their claims, because this is something new that everyone needs to get a very hard grip on. Time.

“Although we expect employers to check their claims and refund the excess amount … we will focus on combating abuse and fraud.”

This is the first time HMRC He has publicly talked about the extent of potential fraud that can be committed as part of a job retention plan, when it compensates up to 80% of an employee’s salary.

Many experts said the government quickly developed a very large plan, making a certain amount of fraud inevitable.

Furlow is blowing now and is expected to be good next month. However, businesses that bring employees back from Furlow will receive another 1,000 if the employee is on duty by the end of January.

As of August 16, 9.6 million people had been placed in government-backed Farlow, with 1.2 million employers seeking support.

Meanwhile, approximately 2.7 million self-employed people have demanded about $ 8.7 billion in government support.

Harra said an academic study estimated that the level of fraud and error could be as high as 10%.