Care and Health is going to file a criminal complaint against the call center Yource, one of the companies that is part of the consortium that is responsible for contact tracing in our country. The agency does this in response to a article on HLN involving possible fraudulent practices at a subsidiary, something that would also become apparent from our own investigation. The collaboration with the company was meanwhile terminated and an external audit of the other companies in the consortium was ordered. Yource employees may be able to work at other call centers, “to minimize the impact on the contact investigation as much as possible”.
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Mifratel, a subsidiary of Yource, may be committing fraud by incorrectly billing services in the context of contact tracing. After the questions from ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’, the agency itself also investigated the facts. In the meantime, it would appear that Yource had indeed charged services that were not actually intended for the contact investigation. Call agents would also have intentionally logged in incorrectly on the call platform of the contact investigation.
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External audit
The agency is now hiring a lawyer to report possible fraud to the public prosecutor’s office. In addition, it is also preparing a civil complaint and the collaboration with Yource was terminated by the consortium. To be on the safe side, Zorg en Gezondheid also has an external audit carried out at the other call centers. They must examine their invoicing and examine the internal control mechanisms.
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It is particularly reprehensible that a call center deals with this social task in this way. This is absolutely not possible.
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“Unacceptable”
“The working method as described in ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’ is unacceptable”, responds Dirk Dewolf as administrator-general of Care and Health. “Moreover, in our view, such an approach amounts to willful deception or even fraud. We will therefore file a criminal complaint against Yource. We would like to have Yource’s working method and false invoicing thoroughly investigated through the courts. If the suspicions of fraud are confirmed, we want to recover all payments of false invoices.”
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“Reprehensible”
Flemish Minister of Welfare Wouter Beke is also displeased. “Contact tracing is an important tool in the fight against the Covid-19 virus. It is particularly reprehensible that a call center deals with this social task in this way. This is absolutely not possible,” it sounds.
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The contact investigation is carried out by a consortium of six call centers: IPG, Call-IT, In2Com (united in Koramic2engage), Callexcell, N-Allo and Yource-Group. They are largely responsible for calling infected persons and their high-risk contacts. Yource itself was responsible for approximately 19 percent of the consortium’s total capacity. Beke insists that the contact investigation can continue to be guaranteed even without Yource.
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We will try to limit the impact as much as possible by making the people who were employed at Yource an offer to work at one of the other call centers.
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offer
“This will undoubtedly have an impact, but we will try to limit that impact as much as possible by making the people who were employed at Yource an offer to work at one of the other call centers,” said Joris Moonens, spokesperson for Care and health.
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“The conversations with those people have already started this weekend, a lot of people have already responded to that. We are aware of about 200 temporary employees from Yource who accepted it. We hope that more people will follow so that we do not lose that experience in the contact investigation and that we hinder the investigation itself as little as possible,” he says at HLN LIVE.
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Apart from that, people are in any case busy with additional recruitments for the contact investigation. “Due to the enormous wave of contamination in recent weeks, the work of the contact tracers is of course also increasing,” says Moonens. “We couldn’t keep up in any case, the work was no longer manageable due to the current staffing. Those additional recruitments are now in full swing. We’ll see how many more people we need. A lot will depend on how many Yource people we can employ in the other call centers.”
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Also read: HLN RESEARCH. Contact investigation fraud? Possibly paid more than 1 million euros for tracers who never made calls (+)
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Watch the report of VTM NIEUWS about the possible cheating at Yource:
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