Portugal's Court of Auditors has detected hundreds of cases where the monthly pensions have been paid to beneficiaries that have been unable to use the money as they are dead.
Some cases have been unearthed where the Ministry of Justice has failed to inform the Social Security department until ten years after the pensioner had died.
The Court of Auditors in the past has been critical of the many shortcomings in the Social Security department’s computer systems, so this year undertook a comprehensive study. The results would be laughable if they were not so serious.
Using information on the Social Security database, the investigators found thousands of errors in the 2.9 million pensions paid by Social Security and 187,000 paid by the Caixa Geral de Aposentações, General Pension Fund.
In 3,176 cases the date of birth of the beneficiaries was incomplete or was incorrect. In almost 45,000 General Pension Fund pensions there was no tax identification held for the beneficiaries.
A sample interrogation of the system took 16,000 pensioner details and discovered that 492 people did not need their pensions as they already had died yet their pensions were being sent to, and presumably drawn by grieving families.
This senseless waste of public money should result in systems changes and a tightening of the link between the Ministry of Justice and Social Security when someone dies; 'should' being the key word here.
Comments
When will the rest of the EU wake up and say what the Czech President said the other day about Greece - that they will not join the Euro until Greece (and by implication the other weak links) are gone?
It seems so odd that the benefit cheque can be cashed by all but the named recipient or some specifically designated individual. If that specifically designated individual is then found to be claiming some long dead relatives benefits then they are committing fraud and 'should' (like the Ed. we must remember that this is Portugal) be in the slammer. And fined - their assets seized to pay the state back.
But given its routine normality, as with European Grants for non-existent farming harvests - will this now just become tomorrows chip wrapper?
Many more cases then turned up.
It turns out the famed longevity of the Japanese people might be mainly the cumulative effect of widespread pension fraud.
How many Portuguese families are receiving pensions for their dead parents?