The measure put in place by the government from 2020 has given rise to a very high number of scams and convictions fall regularly.
This time, two people and a company were sentenced on Monday, November 15 by the Marseille Criminal Court to terms of up to five years' imprisonment for having improperly received state aid with false declarations of partial unemployment.
The first defendant was sentenced to five years in prison with continued detention associated with a ban on exercising a commercial or industrial profession and directing, administering, managing or controlling a company, said Tuesday the Republic of Marseilles.
He had been indicted and imprisoned in a judicial investigation opened on October 6, 2020 for facts of “fraud and money laundering in an organized gang” to the detriment of the State.
A second person was sentenced to a six-month firm sentence, placed in house arrest with electronic surveillance, and a fine of 5,000 euros.
The 6th chamber of the court also sentenced a company, a legal person, to a fine of 60,000 euros and ordered the confiscation of 130,000 euros and a vehicle which had been the subject of criminal seizures.
Their fault?
Having made false declarations of short-time working which allowed them to embezzle several hundred thousand euros which were then transferred to be laundered on accounts in France, Germany, Belgium and Morocco.
"A high number of scams"
The investigation was carried out by the Marseille research section under the direction of the prosecution and in coordination with the services of Tracfin (Intelligence processing and action against clandestine financial circuits), the anti-money laundering unit of the Ministry of the Economy. .
Collaboration with the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office has also enabled the emergency seizure of funds present in a Belgian bank account.
In its press release, the Marseille prosecutor's office recalls that “the exceptional support measure for the economy” put in place by the State in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the various containment measures since 2020 “has benefited crime financial opportunist generating a high number of scams to the detriment of public finances, amounting to several million euros ”.
Last May, a network of crooks had already been sentenced to terms ranging from seven months in prison suspended to thirty months, including fifteen closed, for having embezzled 378,000 euros in state aid by declaring ghost employees.