Fraud in training schemes represented "
clearly a very significant part
" in 2021, its director Guillaume Valette-Valla told AFP, noting that the phenomenon was confirmed in the first six months of this year.
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The Personal Training Account (CPF), which has existed since January 1, 2019, allows any active person to acquire training rights in euros and no longer in hours, via an online platform.
It is the Caisse des dépôts (CDC) which directly remunerates the training companies which sometimes are empty shells seeking to siphon off public money.
Empty shells abounded in 2021: suspicious transaction reports transmitted to Tracfin - alerts transmitted by professionals such as the CDC or banks that suspect abuse - soared to 116 against only 10 in 2020. This represents suspicions of fraud of 43.2 million euros against 7.8 million euros a year earlier, underlines the cell of Bercy in its report.
At the same time, fraud methods have evolved, observes Guillaume Valette-Valla.
In 2020, scam attempts emerged with "
classic patterns of beneficiary identity theft
", he recalls.
However, since then, the networks have become clearly professionalized and now include transnational criminal organisations, particularly outside the European Union, on the model of older frauds such as those on the carbon market.
Despite its very rapid development, CPF fraud is far from being the only public aid scheme to fall victim to fraud, Tracfin noting a persistence of emergency aid scams linked to the Covid-19 crisis.
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Fraud on partial unemployment compensation, the solidarity fund and loans guaranteed by the State represented a financial stake of more than 16 million euros.
Tracfin, which is also engaged in tracking down the assets of Russian oligarchs in the context of European sanctions against Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine, figures the financial and non-financial assets frozen in France since the beginning of the conflict.