Every twelfth recipient of social benefits in Germany tries to deceive the German state
According to the latest departmental report of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), every twelfth long-term unemployed «social benefit recipient» receives more money from the state than is actually due to them.
According to the newspaper «Русская Германия», as of today, 1.9 million residents of Germany receive the Hartz IV state benefit, which provides full payment for rent and cash payments based on family size. If we add to these people those employed part-time, citizens with low wages, the incapacitated due to age or illness, the total number of Hartz IV recipients reaches 6.1 million people. Of these, 154,649 «social benefit recipients» were caught last year knowingly trying to understate their income, receiving money from the state that they were not actually entitled to.
The biggest problem for the social welfare authorities is benefit recipients who work «under the table». In 2014, 40,419 such cases were identified, somewhat exceeding the 2013 figure (39,957). Unscrupulous «social benefit recipients» were mostly caught when officials of local branches of the Employment Agency compared personal data with data from other authorities, for example from tax offices.
As punishment, the employment agencies primarily imposed financial sanctions on the offending unemployed: 29,017 such cases were registered with an average payment of 102.77 euros. However, very often the matter did not end with a simple monetary fine. In 2014, the social welfare authorities sent 54,470 complaints to the public prosecutor's office against the fraudsters. It is clear that in such cases the penal sanctions increased sharply, reaching several thousand euros. The total amount of fines paid by unscrupulous benefit recipients last year amounted to a solid 8.1 million euros.
Some cases of fraud, according to data from the BA report, were so large that it did not end with simple monetary fines. Thus, 267 deceivers of the German state received suspended sentences as a result of court proceedings, and another 79 actually ended up behind bars.
Commenting on this situation, Heinrich Alt, member of the board of the Federal Employment Agency, noted that the absolute majority of needy residents of Germany «quite legally receive social benefits.» However, according to the manager, as in other places, there are those in his agency who try to cheat the state. «We act consistently and quite harshly against such citizens,» said the BA board member.