A serial fraudster who took more than €75,000 in unearned social benefits has reached an agreement to repay the amount and avoid criminal proceedings.

In 2015, this newspaper reported how the man had been discovered abusing seven different benefits sources, including pension schemes, as well as disability and sickness assistance. He was the largest abuser discovered by the government’s benefit fraud investigators in recent years.

At that time, government sources said that the man, whose identity could not be revealed, would be facing serious criminal proceedings.

A Social Solidarity Ministry spokeswoman, however, told this newspaper that the government had reached an agreement with the claimant to pay back the funds in monthly instalments.

“No legal action has been initiated since this agreement was reached. The claimant is now employed and thus no long-term benefits are being paid,” the spokeswoman said.

The Benefit Fraud Investigation Department traced the fraudster’s abuses back to 2006, the year the department was first set up. It is not known whether the abuse went on before that.

The largest abuser discovered by benefit fraud investigators in recent years

Benefit fraud is illegal in terms of the Social Security Act.

Those who receive State aid they are not entitled to normally face an administrative fine and are also made to pay back one-and-a-half times the amount that they received. Abusers also face up to a year in prison.

The government has pledged to clamp down on benefit fraud, with nearly €4 million worth of funds identified as misappropriated every year.

Some €16 million worth of fraudulent benefits have been paid since 2010.

This normally consisted of payments of a few thousand euros, the spokeswoman explained.

Some 600 cases of minor benefit fraud are uncovered every year.

The majority of abusers, the spokeswoman said, were wrongly receiving unemployment payments despite being in regular employment.

A look at the latest figures the BFID collected shed further light on benefit fraud in Malta. Taxpayers saved €4,228,230 in 2015 following BFID investigations.

Inspectors conducted 2,046 on-site inspections in 2015, with 947 cases concluded that year. Of all the cases investigated by the department, a little under two-thirds, or 602, were not considered to be in breach of the Social Security Act.

The remaining 345 cases, which were all considered to be in breach of the provisions of the Social Security Act, were reviewed further and the benefits suspended.

Resulting overpayments have since started to be collected.

By the end of December 2015, the department had received or obtained full or partial feedback on 636 cases.

A number of them had more than one benefit in irregular payment. By the end of the year, the BFID was still expecting full or partial feedback from different government departments on a further 2,221 cases.

According to the department, €36 million has been saved thanks to its investigations over the past 10 years.

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