On Thursday, it became known that charges have been brought against two men and a woman for extensive financial crime in Bergen. In short, they are said to have had several million kroner in undeclared sales linked to car workshops, running a restaurant and investments in property. Hundreds of thousands of kroner have been laundered, among other things, via the bank accounts of three minor children. The illegalities have been going on for ten years before it was discovered by the Swedish Tax Agency. In this safe, the police found NOK 220,000. Photo: The police – The case illustrates a failure in the control systems when it is possible to own and run a limited company with a turnover of millions and a number of employees, while at the same time as the top manager of the company receives unemployment benefits from Nav, state attorney Rudolf Christoffersen told news on Thursday. One of the accused men is a 37-year-old man who was general manager of several joint-stock companies, at the same time that he submitted electronic registration cards to Nav. Nor did he mention the working conditions in guidance meetings with Nav. As a result, he was paid unemployment benefits. According to the indictment, there is a total of NOK 386,000 in question. This must be an account of both white and black turnover. Photo: The police It is legal to receive unemployment benefit and run a limited company Nav reported the relationship itself in November 2022 after information from the police and its own investigations, according to Ole Johan Heir, director of Nav control. The man denies the Nav fraud. – He maintains that he was unemployed during the period he received unemployment benefits and that he did not perform work for the companies that appear in the indictment, says his defender Jørgen Riple to BA. The agency was first in dialogue with the police in 2021 about the matter, and then became aware of the potential fraud. The Control Director explains that it is perfectly possible and legal to own and run a limited company at the same time as a person receives unemployment benefits. The conditions for receiving unemployment benefit are that working hours have been reduced by at least 50% and that the person has lost income due to unemployment, he explains. The Nav system is based on trust, which makes it difficult to detect fraudsters. Photo: Ørn E. Borgen – A person can be partially unemployed and legally be able to combine unemployment benefit and professional activity, as long as the person reports this to NAV, he writes in an e-mail to news. The system is based on trust, and the recipient of unemployment benefit declares working hours and income every 14 days. This makes fraud difficult to detect. – It will therefore be difficult to detect whether someone is at work and that this is in conflict with the performance without NAV itself becoming suspicious of it, or that NAV receives information from others which gives reason to investigate whether the information we have received is correct. Ole Johan Heir, director of Nav control, says it is difficult to catch Nav fraud in a trust-based system. Photo: Nav Fraud for significant amounts every year Nav often experiences abuse of the system, and is now working to improve the control systems. – Although the vast majority of people who receive benefits from NAV are honest, we know that some abuse the welfare schemes. Misuse of the schemes is a breach of trust and constitutes a serious form of financial crime. NAV is defrauded of significant amounts every year. State Attorney Rudolf Christoffersen believes that the new non-criminal information regulations should make it easier for the agencies to detect this type of crime. This money it found in the safe. – We think part of the reason why this has been able to go on for so many years is that it has been possible to a small extent to share information between the control agencies, says Christoffersen. The regulation was adopted last year, and gives increased opportunity to share information between agencies such as Nav and the Norwegian Tax Agency. Nav is working to make it easier to detect errors in the future, according to the director. – We also work to prevent such fraud from occurring. Among other things, we work on incorporating control mechanisms into new case management solutions. We believe this can be an effective way to prevent mistakes from happening.
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– Difficult to capture – news Vestland
