Financial control detects numerous violations of corona loans

The Swiss Federal Audit Office wants stronger controls on short-time work compensation and reports an increase in companies that have potentially improperly drawn corona loans.

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(agl) Financial control found concrete indications of a violation of the Solidarity Guarantee Ordinance in a total of 1470 guarantees. As the SFAO wrote in an audit report published on Thursday, the majority of the cases involve companies that paid dividends despite the ban. Specifically, it is about 1003 possible violations, which affect guarantees with a total value of 264 million francs. Compared to the last SFAO report from August, the number of cases has doubled.

As the SFAO further writes in its report, there were also irregularities at numerous companies with regard to the sales figures. Around nine percent of the guarantees showed a declared turnover that was at least 25 percent higher than the information given for the calculation of VAT. According to the SFAO, there are additional irregularities in around 600 cases, 2500 of which relate to loans of over 100,000 francs.

No evidence of abuse of income replacement

However, in a comparison of the loans examined as a whole, the SFAO found only a few violations. In total, the SFAO examined around 133,000 current guarantees worth CHF 16.4 billion. With a total of 4646 reported suspected cases, the proportion of possible violations is just under 3.5 percent.

According to the financial control, there is still “no evidence of systematic errors or misuse” of the Corona income replacement for the self-employed. There, too, the possible cases of abuse have risen since August, from around 200 to 500 cases. However, these come to a total of around one million data records, as the SFAO continues to write.

Seco should control more

According to the financial control, however, stronger supervision is needed for short-time working allowances. The high risk of abuse remains there, with no real possibility of control. “This has so far been confirmed by the hundreds of reports of abuse that the unemployment funds and the SFAO have submitted to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) for clarification,” says the test report. The Seco has so far carried out 36 on-site inspections, which led to six criminal charges and brought back CHF 1.1 million. The SFAO wrote that the Seco should strengthen its controls.

The SFAO also recommends that the Department of Economic Affairs adapt the legal basis as soon as possible, “in order to require companies to prepare and store the documents required for the controls”. The unemployment insurance funds should also strictly adhere to the period of three months within which the employer must submit the short-time work statements. Several companies had not met the deadline for forwarding, but the compensation was still paid, writes the SFAO.

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