" Does the administration make the policy of the ostrich? This is the question posed aloud by MP Patrick Hetzel (UDI), chairman of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the fraud of social benefits, after the hearing of Charles Prats last Tuesday. In question, new official documents from which the magistrate, who made the estimate of social fraud a workhorse, calculates a potential loss of around 30 billion euros, far from the estimates of the Social security, which puts fraud at a few hundred million euros at most.
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In support of this new demonstration, a document published on November 7: the response of the public authorities to a question asked by a previous parliamentary commission of inquiry. At the start of the school year, MP Carole Grandjean (LREM) and Senator UDI Nathalie Goulet (UDI) asked the Minister of Solidarity and Health for the number of " active NIRs ", that is to say the number of accounts Vitale cards in a format specific to foreigners, and capable of receiving social benefits (thus excluding deactivated cards).
In the pages of the Official Journal of the French Republic, the administration concerned said that it identified 12,392,865 people " with an open right to receive at least one social benefit ". And it is on the basis of this new group of policyholders that Charles Prats notes a first inconsistency: according to INSEE, there are 8.4 million foreigners in France. Why such a gap?
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By subtracting the retirees born abroad (1.1 million) and the regimes specific to Polynesia and New Caledonia, the magistrate arrived at the figure of 2.4 million foreigners active in excess in the system of French social security. It is on the basis of a national average expenditure of 12,500 euros by Vitale card that the magistrate declares that the potential fraud reaches " 30 billion euros per year ".
37% of French retirees " born abroad "?
In detail, other inconsistencies arise, which make the magistrate doubt: of the more than 12 million insured born abroad, 86% would have an open right to sickness benefits, 43% would be in a position to receive benefits family and 33% would have pension rights. By comparing these percentages with INSEE statistics on social assistance recipients in France, this would, for example, make 42% of family allowance recipients who were born abroad, or even a fifth of retirees in France who would be born abroad ... Inconsistent figures, according to the magistrate, except to imagine these supernumerary Vitale cards as a support for large-scale fraud.
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Contacted by Le Figaro , the Social Security department refers to its press release of February 13 reporting 609,000 excess Vitale cards, and stresses that " this does not mean that there is fraud or the consumption of care with these Vitale cards ”. In commission, the magistrate however evoked this point: " when one is in the family branch, it is that one touches every month ... Same thing for the old age branch with the payment of a retirement ". Case to follow.