Fraud: the government is preparing new measures for the fall

The government is preparing a law with new measures to combat fraud, which should be presented to Parliament this fall, said Public Accounts Minister Thomas Cazenave in an interview with the newspaper Les Echos on Thursday.

Public aid fraud is in the crosshairs of the Ministry of the Economy, with in particular MaPrimeRénov (to carry out energy renovation work in one's home), but also apprenticeship aid or the personal training account (CPF) . In all, envelopes bringing together 100 billion euros of public money.

However, for MaPrimeRénov for example, the minister indicated having received “reports from Tracfin (the intelligence service responsible for combating clandestine financial circuits, editor's note) for around 400 million euros”. The Ministry of the Economy intends to put in place various measures, in particular to suspend the payment of aid following a report from Tracfin.

Bercy also wants to tighten controls linked to the holding of cryptoassets. “The ECB estimates that 5 million French people use cryptoassets and there are only 150,000 declarations to the General Directorate of Public Finances. When we compare these two figures, there is obviously a part that escapes us,” underlined Mr. Cazenave.

Another point of attention is sea freight. Bercy thus wishes to put in place for shipping companies “a system equivalent to the air PNR”, that is to say the passenger file, which collects information from air passengers. This time it would be a question of collecting data on goods, in order to facilitate the role of customs.

Furthermore, the government wants to improve the recovery of fraud, and intends to do this in particular by slowing down universal transfers of assets (the dissolution of a company). The minister also wishes to legalize the seizure of the assets of people held in police custody, in order to enable the recovery of criminal fixed fines.