Why a taskforce wasnt created to go after this i will never know. The taskforce made up of hmrc and police detectives could have recovered SOMETHING!
It’s only money don’t worry someone will pay for it at some point.
Why isn’t this money thats been lost due to fraud a much bigger story?
Especially as the Tories like to portray themselves as the part of fiscal responsibility?
Considering the support the government had from the public and press when it came to tackling benifit fraud…
Edit: Maybe the problem is simple apathy? “They’re all at it” seems to be something I hear often. There is an expectation that the people we elect or those in power will be corrupt. Instead of protesting in favour of higher standards we simply let them get away with it because it’s too much trouble to stand up for what is right.
We have a government that appears to be openly dodgy in a way that I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. The government knows that there will never be any consiquences because everybody just shrugs their shoulders.
Not surprised at this at all. I mean we can blame the “higher ups” about abusing furlough etc but everyone was at it or complicit in some way or another.
My company has recorded record profits the last 2 years and it abused the shit out of furlough – placing extra burden on staff during that period.
I think additional measures should have been placed on companies who received loans to be locked into some kind of medium term accountability etc. It felt like money was being thrown away a lot of the time.
Nothing to see here, brush it under the carpet.
But remember to go after disabled people and those on universal credit.
its not lost its just in the Hand of friends and donors of the Tory party so all as planned..
I literally had my local council emailing me in the pandemic going “do you want any free money”
This was inevitable though, either people were going to get angry that they were not recieving any support or there was going to be helicopter money.
Meanwhile they wouldn’t extend the £20 uplift to vulnerable disabled and carers on legacy benefits. Which apparently is absolutely fine according to the judiciary. Bastards.
You can review the National Audit Office’s report on the BBLS scheme, and honestly it’s not surprising.
The entire scheme relied solely on the KYC/AML checks that banks already had in place, and for the eligibility criteria of the loans, it was simply self-certification by the client. If the customer attests to the loan, the bank will give them the money. I can understand that the government wanted to provide immediate liquidity, however this kind of thing is ripe for abuse, and we’re seeing the effects of it.
Best of all, each BBLS loan is backed by a governmental guarantee of 100%, and for fraudulent applications, as long as the bank has performed its normal KYC/AML processes, and the customer self-certified as eligible, the guarantee is still valid. Meaning that tax-payers are on the hook for a scheme that the Government forced to be poorly implemented.
Part 2 of the report covers fraud. The BEIS and BBB are working on counter-fraud measures, but basically banks have to do the minimal amount of work to determine fraud and initiate recovery of the funds, in order to benefit from the full guarantee.
To encourage the lending of funds by the banks, and to assist those looking to obtain these loans, the government (or rather, the taxpayer) will fund the first 12 months of interest payments (referred to as Business Interruption Payments) on these loans, so it’s not just the initial capital lost on the fraudulent funds, but also interest repayments up to the point of when the fraud was detected, or 12 months, whichever comes first, which goes directly to the banks.
If only there was a rule around Know Your Client for banks and a paper trail of the transfers made, then it wouldn’t be so hard finding out where the money went and is…
A.K.A the people in power stole your tax money, using their friends to funnel it into their own pockets.
The cheap whores in Parliament go belly-up every time you wave a five pound note in their faces.
No values. No decency. Thieving hypocritical criminals.
Right so *THIS* is why there are somehow *more* billionaires in the UK after the pandemic? Just public money hoovered upwards by a select few?
Makes that letter about me needing to urgently pay back universal credit from 2020 so much sweeter 🥰
I took a bounce back loan for my business (in addition to furlough funds).
I was staggered by how easy it was to access almost £50k. All I had to do was self certify turnover and tick a few boxes and the funds were in our account within a couple of days.
Anyone with a Ltd Co could have done this, took the cash and closed down the Ltd.
Thankfully I didn’t end up needing much of mine and it’s being paid back.
Tbh real tinfoil hat time but I have a hard time believing this wasnt intentional, I was getting dozens of letters from the hmrc begging me to claim covid support; and absolute hearsay from pals in banks were told just approve anything ASAP rather than investigate
£16.. billion.
This is criminal levels of negligence.
That’s enough to double the amount of money people receive on universal credit.
It’s enough to double a the salary of every nurse in the country.
Wtf is happening?
I’m not so hot on maths; how many £350m buses is that now?
Money is never lost, it is transfered. we got scammed.
People talk about £16bn like its not a lot of money.
If you made £1/second it would take 500+ years to get to that amount.
Another egregious waste of money from the government whose supporters were likely the biggest beneficiaries of this fraud.
The equivalent of ten year’s worth of benefits fraud.
Jesus Christ, that’s 8 months of extra testing we could have had
Why not offer 20p on £1 for recovery and let one of the big four go and find it
But it’s desperately important that the DWP humiliates, bullies and savagely attacks the poorest nd most vulnerable in society because ‘we have to balance the books’
Yeah but it’s rich people doing the fraud so it’s alright
If they know there has been fraud, then – by definition – they must know who the perpetrators are.
For example: business charged for 5 employees when they only had 2. Surely a quick check via the government’s OWN department HMRC would show they only had 2. What was too difficult for this tory administration to do such a simple and basic check?
If they know they (no WE/ US: THE UK TAXPAYER) has been defrauded, then they must know the names and addresses of the people who made the claim.
In fact, if the tories can’t be arsed chasing these criminals, then I for one would love to take up the case – for a reasonable cut that is, of course.
Anyone else fancy a dabble?
Nothing was lost, it went into the pockets of Tory mates. Oh sorry I meant, cunts. The pockets of cunts cunt mates.
I wonder if they are not investigating properly due to Tory chums being the ones who knew that they wouldn’t be chased if they did so.
I wouldn’t normally suggest a conspiracy of the sort, but under this government, the actual reality of similar stories is less far fetched.
“But.. and this is the clever bit.. we took it back off the poor!”
We’re just an absolute disgrace of a nation these days.
There was a story on Watchdog the other day that detailed the investigation of some bloke that set up a few non-existant companies to get a couple of hundred grand in Covid relief loans from their local council.
They caught him, fined him and jailed him.
Why can’t they do the same thing to the tory mates that ripped off millions?
Just so everyone knows, that works out to be over £500 per UK taxpayer…
Only a few Romanians that I know about got at least a few millions out of this. Before you star downvoting I’m Romanian as well. And I just hate people that take advantage of this amazing country.
32 comments
Why a taskforce wasnt created to go after this i will never know. The taskforce made up of hmrc and police detectives could have recovered SOMETHING!
It’s only money don’t worry someone will pay for it at some point.
Why isn’t this money thats been lost due to fraud a much bigger story?
Especially as the Tories like to portray themselves as the part of fiscal responsibility?
Considering the support the government had from the public and press when it came to tackling benifit fraud…
Edit: Maybe the problem is simple apathy? “They’re all at it” seems to be something I hear often. There is an expectation that the people we elect or those in power will be corrupt. Instead of protesting in favour of higher standards we simply let them get away with it because it’s too much trouble to stand up for what is right.
We have a government that appears to be openly dodgy in a way that I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. The government knows that there will never be any consiquences because everybody just shrugs their shoulders.
Not surprised at this at all. I mean we can blame the “higher ups” about abusing furlough etc but everyone was at it or complicit in some way or another.
My company has recorded record profits the last 2 years and it abused the shit out of furlough – placing extra burden on staff during that period.
I think additional measures should have been placed on companies who received loans to be locked into some kind of medium term accountability etc. It felt like money was being thrown away a lot of the time.
Nothing to see here, brush it under the carpet.
But remember to go after disabled people and those on universal credit.
its not lost its just in the Hand of friends and donors of the Tory party so all as planned..
I literally had my local council emailing me in the pandemic going “do you want any free money”
This was inevitable though, either people were going to get angry that they were not recieving any support or there was going to be helicopter money.
Meanwhile they wouldn’t extend the £20 uplift to vulnerable disabled and carers on legacy benefits. Which apparently is absolutely fine according to the judiciary. Bastards.
You can review the National Audit Office’s report on the BBLS scheme, and honestly it’s not surprising.
The entire scheme relied solely on the KYC/AML checks that banks already had in place, and for the eligibility criteria of the loans, it was simply self-certification by the client. If the customer attests to the loan, the bank will give them the money. I can understand that the government wanted to provide immediate liquidity, however this kind of thing is ripe for abuse, and we’re seeing the effects of it.
Best of all, each BBLS loan is backed by a governmental guarantee of 100%, and for fraudulent applications, as long as the bank has performed its normal KYC/AML processes, and the customer self-certified as eligible, the guarantee is still valid. Meaning that tax-payers are on the hook for a scheme that the Government forced to be poorly implemented.
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-bounce-back-loan-scheme-an-update/
Part 2 of the report covers fraud. The BEIS and BBB are working on counter-fraud measures, but basically banks have to do the minimal amount of work to determine fraud and initiate recovery of the funds, in order to benefit from the full guarantee.
To encourage the lending of funds by the banks, and to assist those looking to obtain these loans, the government (or rather, the taxpayer) will fund the first 12 months of interest payments (referred to as Business Interruption Payments) on these loans, so it’s not just the initial capital lost on the fraudulent funds, but also interest repayments up to the point of when the fraud was detected, or 12 months, whichever comes first, which goes directly to the banks.
If only there was a rule around Know Your Client for banks and a paper trail of the transfers made, then it wouldn’t be so hard finding out where the money went and is…
A.K.A the people in power stole your tax money, using their friends to funnel it into their own pockets.
The cheap whores in Parliament go belly-up every time you wave a five pound note in their faces.
No values. No decency. Thieving hypocritical criminals.
Right so *THIS* is why there are somehow *more* billionaires in the UK after the pandemic? Just public money hoovered upwards by a select few?
Makes that letter about me needing to urgently pay back universal credit from 2020 so much sweeter 🥰
I took a bounce back loan for my business (in addition to furlough funds).
I was staggered by how easy it was to access almost £50k. All I had to do was self certify turnover and tick a few boxes and the funds were in our account within a couple of days.
Anyone with a Ltd Co could have done this, took the cash and closed down the Ltd.
Thankfully I didn’t end up needing much of mine and it’s being paid back.
Tbh real tinfoil hat time but I have a hard time believing this wasnt intentional, I was getting dozens of letters from the hmrc begging me to claim covid support; and absolute hearsay from pals in banks were told just approve anything ASAP rather than investigate
£16.. billion.
This is criminal levels of negligence.
That’s enough to double the amount of money people receive on universal credit.
It’s enough to double a the salary of every nurse in the country.
Wtf is happening?
I’m not so hot on maths; how many £350m buses is that now?
Money is never lost, it is transfered. we got scammed.
People talk about £16bn like its not a lot of money.
If you made £1/second it would take 500+ years to get to that amount.
Another egregious waste of money from the government whose supporters were likely the biggest beneficiaries of this fraud.
The equivalent of ten year’s worth of benefits fraud.
Jesus Christ, that’s 8 months of extra testing we could have had
Why not offer 20p on £1 for recovery and let one of the big four go and find it
But it’s desperately important that the DWP humiliates, bullies and savagely attacks the poorest nd most vulnerable in society because ‘we have to balance the books’
Yeah but it’s rich people doing the fraud so it’s alright
If they know there has been fraud, then – by definition – they must know who the perpetrators are.
For example: business charged for 5 employees when they only had 2. Surely a quick check via the government’s OWN department HMRC would show they only had 2. What was too difficult for this tory administration to do such a simple and basic check?
If they know they (no WE/ US: THE UK TAXPAYER) has been defrauded, then they must know the names and addresses of the people who made the claim.
In fact, if the tories can’t be arsed chasing these criminals, then I for one would love to take up the case – for a reasonable cut that is, of course.
Anyone else fancy a dabble?
Nothing was lost, it went into the pockets of Tory mates. Oh sorry I meant, cunts. The pockets of cunts cunt mates.
I wonder if they are not investigating properly due to Tory chums being the ones who knew that they wouldn’t be chased if they did so.
I wouldn’t normally suggest a conspiracy of the sort, but under this government, the actual reality of similar stories is less far fetched.
“But.. and this is the clever bit.. we took it back off the poor!”
We’re just an absolute disgrace of a nation these days.
There was a story on Watchdog the other day that detailed the investigation of some bloke that set up a few non-existant companies to get a couple of hundred grand in Covid relief loans from their local council.
They caught him, fined him and jailed him.
Why can’t they do the same thing to the tory mates that ripped off millions?
Just so everyone knows, that works out to be over £500 per UK taxpayer…
Only a few Romanians that I know about got at least a few millions out of this. Before you star downvoting I’m Romanian as well. And I just hate people that take advantage of this amazing country.