Suspicion of infidelity against the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians

Created: 06/21/2022Updated: 06/21/2022, 16:22

An employee holds a swab for a corona test in his hands.

© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa/symbol picture

It is now clear that test centers cheated on accounts for corona tests.

There were hardly any controls, the operators only had to specify a number of tests - and collect them from the state.

How big the scam was only comes out gradually.

Berlin – The board of directors of the Berlin Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV) has been targeted by the police in connection with falsified statements in corona test centers worth millions.

A spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor said on Tuesday that proceedings had been initiated at the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) on suspicion of infidelity.

"Spiegel TV" had previously reported about it.

According to spokesman Sebastian Büchner, the public prosecutor's office is still pending an examination of whether there is actually a concrete initial suspicion and against whom it is directed.

From the KV it was said that the board rejected the accusation “in the strongest possible terms”.

During the corona pandemic, KV is also responsible for billing the test centers and checking for “plausibility and abnormalities”.

According to its own statements, KV Berlin has paid out around 590 million euros in tax money so far (as of June 21).

The payment of a further 81 million euros is still under review.

At peak times there were around 1,500 corona test sites in Berlin, which, according to the Senate, were only “sporadically” checked.

The police and prosecutors expressed their horror in the "Spiegel" article at how easy it was for the authorities to make the criminals fraud.

So far they have been investigating around 380 suspected cases against operators due to suspected fraud.

The assumed amount of damage should have been at least 24 million euros months ago, but it is now likely to be much higher.

The investigators responsible from the LKA and the public prosecutor's office told the "Spiegel" that the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians had not transmitted any suspected cases to the police.

The KV, on the other hand, announced that since billing began in spring 2021, they had "worked closely with the Berlin investigative authorities and done everything to help uncover fraudulent test site operators and avert damage".

A certain percentage of the sum paid out for the tests remains with KV as profit.

According to their information, this was initially 3.5 percent, but according to the KV it is now 2.5 percent.

The so-called administrative cost rate was calculated differently, explained a spokeswoman.

Across Germany, 10.5 billion euros were paid out to the commercial operators of the test stations.

Investigators assume a fraud sum of at least one billion up to 1.5 billion euros.

The Berlin police tracked down the fraudsters primarily through money laundering reports from banks, which noticed sudden payments of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of euros to the accounts of kiosk operators.

In the film, chief inspector Susann Langner describes the case of a suspect known to the police who registered his small kiosks as test centers and stated that 800 to 1000 tests a day were carried out in the tiny shops.

The man collected up to 240,000 euros per month, some months were billed twice.

The amount of fraud is believed to be several million euros, and large amounts were often transferred directly abroad.

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According to the police, another operator accounted for 245 tests in one day in one of its centers, but the police only found 4 tests in its computer.

In the case of a suspect, the police assume that 20,000 to 30,000 tests are overbilled - per month.

The KV paid 1.4 million euros to the man.

A small test site made many group appointments.

60 people are said to have been tested at 9 a.m. at the same time, and the next group of 60 people is said to have come at 9.02 a.m.

Several million euros were collected.

Jörg Engelhard from the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) told the "Spiegel": "It's like having a printing press in the basement, with which you can print the money yourself." His colleague Jochen Sindberg said into the camera: "We have widened my eyes and said, how is it possible that the hurdles are so low to receive these payments." And Chief Inspector Langner said: "When I see how the money was thrown out and how easy it was to cheat, I think I'm pretty bitter." dpa