Businesses probed for wage subsidy fraud
Nearly 11,000 businesses that received the wage subsidy have been audited, with hundreds under active consideration for legal action.
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has been carrying out the random audits, as more than 759,000 businesses have received the wage subsidy from the $14 billion fund.
As at February 26, MSD had completed 10,902 audits of the wage subsidy and resolved 4750 allegations of misuse.
MSD client service support general manager George van Ooyen said that altogether 1011 cases had been referred to investigators for potential legal action.
Of those, 386 were currently being investigated while 462 had been resolved and the balance had not been assigned to an investigator yet, van Ooyen said.
He said that in cases where payments should not have been claimed, applicants might be asked to repay the subsidy, or in the most serious cases, where there was evidence of deliberate fraud, MSD would consider criminal prosecutions. ‘‘Decisions on these are being made in coming weeks and months. There have been no prosecutions to date,’’ van Ooyen said.
The latest round of the wage subsidy became available to businesses on March 4 while Auckland was in alert level 3 and the rest of the country in level 2.
Yesterday morning, Auckland and the rest of the country dropped one alert level.
As at February 26, more than 17,500 businesses had repaid a total of $694.6 million, van Ooyen said. About 54 businesses had disputed refund requests and while some of those subsequently repaid, five businesses had refused to pay.